I understand the pushback to ESPN NFL analyst Jeff Saturday being hired as the interim head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
In a sport where it seems that glorifies being the first person in the facility and the last person to leave, that preaches as a coach you’re not working hard enough if you’re not sleeping on a couch in your office, for Saturday to skip the line to head coach of an NFL franchise is certainly concerning.
But, an aspect I think has gone unmentioned is the idea that if Jeff Saturday has any success during his eight-game audition as the Colts coach, it could open the door for other analysts to jump straight from TV to the league.
We all know and have heard the age-old adage that “the NFL is a copycat league”. It’s a league made up of people who are too afraid to step outside of conventional wisdom and thinking because it might cost them their job, until an innovate enters and blows up the whole thing. Everyone then follows that person’s lead, and the cycle repeats.
There are too many examples to point to. The most recent example, at least when it comes to coaching, is Sean McVay. The joke in the 2019 offseason was “If you’ve ever had a lunch with Sean McVay, you could be hired as an NFL head coach.”
So the same would likely hold true with Saturday, as well. NFL franchises have looked for head coaches in the same exact locations for decades. These are, for argument’s sake, the only places you can ascend to an NFL head coach from: College head coach, NFL offensive coordinator, NFL defensive coordinator. That’s it. That’s the list.
But, if Jeff Saturday can leap from Get Up to a 6-2 run as the Colts head coach — which, as a Colts fan, I view as likely as me waking up next to Kate Upton tomorrow — you can be assured that someone in an NFL front office is going to ask themselves if they need to consider thinking about another NFL television analyst as their new head coach. Good or bad, that’s just how the league operates.
Now, from a sports media perspective, I wonder if it changes the way analysts will discuss the game on TV. It would only make sense. The average NFL head coach salary is $6.6 million. Outside of Tony Romo and Troy Aikman, there aren’t a whole lot of NFL TV analysts making that much money. Make no mistake, I’m not questioning the motives of analysts on TV or believe they’re only fueled by dollars. I assume, and maybe I’m naive, that players turned analysts view their broadcasting careers as a way to stay involved in the game they love while making a decent amount of cash doing it.
But if the door has been opened by Saturday for, say Tedy Bruschi, Matt Hasselbeck, Rodney Harrison, Chris Simms or whatever NFL analyst with no coaching experience you’d like to include, wouldn’t that analyst at least consider coaching in the NFLa possibility now? Wouldn’t you believe that if you come across as a fiery, knowledgeable presence that the opportunity now exists that someone could hire you as an NFL head coach?
Do analysts now work harder to not criticize owners and GMs that could be viewed as potential landing spots? Do they now prepare more segments talking real nuts and bolts football? Getting deep into the Xs & Os and diagraming plays as a quasi audition for those NFL powerbrokers who are watching what the media says about them even when they say they don’t? I don’t believe it’s some slippery slope where everyone now finds themselves trying interview-by-proxy for NFL head coaching jobs, but I will find it fun to somewhat monitor if Saturday ascending to the top spot of a franchise changes the way others now cover the league.
Furthermore, do ESPN, NBC Sports, FOX Sports, CBS Sports, Amazon Prime Video, and NFL Network now need to be leery of former players wanting to join their ranks with ulterior motives? There are always going to be stars stepping away from the game and looking for their next opportunity. Will any view media as an avenue to “cut the line”, like Saturday has been accused of? From the NFL’s perspective, there’s always been a natural progression of “player to assistant coach, assistant coach to coordinator, coordinator to head coach, head coach to fired coach, fired coach to TV analyst”. But now the applecart has been upset.
As I mentioned, the entire likelihood of the situation rests upon Saturday being successful, which I don’t see happening, but with the NFL’s propensity for copying what worked for someone else, coupled with the shear amount of former players working as analysts for the league’s media partners, I think you have to ask the question if Jeff Saturday is the first person to leap from analyst to head coach or if he’s the last one to do it.
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
