Frank Reich arrived as the Colts head coach shortly after Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels took on the same job, put together a team and risked his professional career by retiring at the last minute.
Reich stood behind a podium and watched owner Jim Irsay and general manager Chris Ballard discuss Andrew Luck’s shocking retirement just before the start of the 2018 season, a year after Reich left a Super Bowl champion team that it depended on the heroics of a substitute. quarterback whom Reich had to groom after the team’s MVP candidate suffered a torn ACL.
He oversaw devastating injuries, coached the team through a quarterback game, and has generally proven to be the kind of person who would want to get on the shotgun when the car starts to slide down an icy road in the dark of the midnight.
With your disaster preparedness credentials recognized, it’s fair to wonder how you will get out of the stage you are in now. We’re not saying Reich should be fired from his job Sunday night after his team lost its second straight game to an interim coach to cost what seemed like a near-concrete place in the playoffs. Far from it, in fact. If the Colts irresponsibly opted for a reactionary head coach change, they would launch a candidate who would immediately be the number one choice for almost any team with a vacancy.
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But what awaits him now – bouncing back from arguably the worst regular-season loss in franchise history – may be the biggest challenge he’s ever faced in a coaching career that’s already unlikely to be fraught with massive mountains to climb. In a matter of a few months, you will be tasked with fixing a thorny Carson Wentz situation. Wentz’s median performance Sunday against the Jaguars, even when paired with MVP candidate Jonathan Taylor, wasn’t enough to beat the worst team in football. You’ll have to help justify using a first-round pick to put Wentz first. You’ll have to explain why we only got to see the best moments of the former No. 2 pick in microscopic glimpses this year.
Reich will have to draft free agents knowing the Titans are only getting healthier, the Jaguars are only getting better and the Texans, at some point, are going to emerge from this soft tank attempt with some serious draft equity. Someone will have to answer sternly for the fact that the Colts, despite being one of the most progressive organizations in the NFL, a team that seems to make one painfully sensible decision after another, may somehow have ended the fourth year of Reich. with just one playoff victory under his belt.
This is the problem with being a good coach – losing a game like this feels so strange and unexpected. The Jaguars entered the week as the worst offense in the league and possibly the worst defense in the league. Rookie Trevor Lawrence entered the game without a single game with a quarterback rating above 100, and his only multiple touchdown game was against the Texans.
And yet, from the very first series, Lawrence and a talented offense in scattered skill positions walked the field as if they had finally managed to burn every page of Urban Meyer from his playbook. Allowing the Jaguars to yell at their clown-laden fan base in a frenzy felt like a death sentence for a team with no room for error.
These are the types of losses that franchises do not immediately recover from. Aside from blowing a 28-3 lead in the Super Bowl, losing to one of the worst teams of the past decade a week after losing to a second team operating without its head coach to knock you out of the playoffs is emotionally devastating. running can get. What do you say when players clear their lockers? How do you fumigate the collective psyche of a team that was not prepared to handle a tap-in? The 26-11 loss to the Jaguars wasn’t even particularly close. It was flat. Cruel.
Reich has trudged through some swampy lands before. He didn’t sound like a person trying to make excuses or give up on Sunday after the game. Perhaps training Darwinism has brought him to a point of equilibrium. But one has to wonder if he knows how long it will burn or for how long. One has to wonder if Reich has more magic left.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.