Eleven years ago, the late Chris Mortensen surprised many on the final Friday of the regular season by writing the Browns might fire head coach Rob Chudzinski. Less than 48 hours later, his team on the field in the first quarter of Cleveland’s season-finale in Pittsburgh, reports went viral that Cleveland would fire the coach. Among the coaching vacancies at the end of every NFL season, one is usually a surprise. Which team will surprise this weekend?
Signs seem to be pointing to Indianapolis. Shane Steichen, who also lost his job on Chudzinski’s 2013 staff that day in Cleveland, could be coaching his final game as head coach when the Colts (7-9) host the Jaguars (4-12) on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, FOX). Dianna Russini from The Athletic believes Steichen is safe for now.
“I’ve had some conversations around the league, in terms of Shane Steichen,” she said on this week’s edition of the Scoop City podcast. “I don’t get the sense that they’re going to make a move at this moment. But that could be something that changes.”
What’s changed over the last three weeks is the Colts’ evaporating playoff hopes. Indianapolis was 6-6 coming out of its late-season bye but has since lost two of three, including a disappointing 45-33 loss to the Giants at MetLife Stadium, where New York hadn’t won all season. And amid that stretch, current and former players have criticized the way the team has finished the year.
“I’ve said what I believed to be the truth about the team & a bunch of ‘Colts fans’ on the internet were trying to get me booed out of the city,” McAfee tweeted after the team’s loss in New York. “Current players, who have won nothing during their entire tenures, started using me and my face to try and paint me as the enemy in the city I’ve committed my life to. And in the end… everything went just like I (expletive) said it would … In the biggest moments everybody with a brain knew they’d crack. and they did.”
“There’s no vision,” an anonymous Colts veteran told Zak Keefer and James Boyd from The Athletic. “From the top down — from the front office, to the coaches, to the players — no one is ever on the same page, and every year at the end, we’re sitting here losing. If you look at the best teams in the league, they all have a vision, and they commit to it. The Chiefs keep winning because they have a vision. The Lions turned things around because they have a vision.”
Steichen obviously has a vision. After leaving Cleveland, he was instrumental in the rise of Justin Herbert and Jalen Hurts. And as Eagles offensive coordinator in 2022, he helped lead the dangerous Eagles to a Super Bowl berth before taking the reins of the Colts in 2023. One big issue seems to be miscommunication between the coach and the locker room with regard to quarterback Anthony Richardson.
Others have interpreted McAfee’s comments as a grenade lobbed in the lap of Chris Ballard, the team’s general manager since 2017. But any general manager would’ve struggled to reset the franchise trajectory after a winning franchise quarterback suddenly retires in August of an upcoming season.
The Colts situation bears watching over the next three days, similar to Jacksonville. Sunday’s game with the Jaguars might include two head coaches in their last games, including Jacksonville’s Doug Pederson. Only two years ago, Pederson led the team to a remarkable turnaround that ended in the Divisional Round of the playoffs against eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City. Patience is razor thin in the NFL.
For more information on the Colts and Jaguars, visit the Indianapolis and Jacksonville team pages at ProFootballPost.com.
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