Jeff Saturday wants Colts full-time coaching position; has he earned the opportunity?

INDIANAPOLIS — Jim Irsay’s decision to hire Jeff Saturday has always carried an experimental element.

On both sides of the marriage.

By making a move no other NFL team has made in six decades, the Colts put themselves out on a limb, a reality brought home by the avalanche of reaction that poured onto Indianapolis in the week after the decision.

From Saturday’s standpoint, the opportunity represented an unknown. When Saturday was hired, he framed the opportunity as a chance to help out an organization he loves deeply, and a chance for him to find out, for real, if coaching in the NFL was something he wanted to do.

He’d been a high school coach but given it up to devote himself to a successful run as an ESPN analyst. He’d been a consultant on offensive line play in Indianapolis. When the Colts tried to hire him as an offensive line coach, a move general manager Chris Ballard said the team tried twice, it failed to come together.

 Saturday’s friends from his Colts days thought he was happy.

“The Jeff I know likes to be at home,” long-time teammate Reggie Wayne said.

But the Colts legend has admitted he’d thought about coaching, thought a lot about a story 49ers general manager John Lynch had told him: When Lynch was working as a television analyst, he was always thinking about what he’d do if he ran a team.

“I thought about it from the coaching perspective,” Saturday said in his introductory press conference. “Every year, I’ve done a sheet of who I think the best (offensive coordinators) are, who are the best (defensive coordinators), who would be great consultants, who are people you would want in your building? I’ve done those exercises.”

Actually doing the job is a different animal.

An animal Saturday is beginning to understand, and an animal that doesn’t seem to scare him away.

Four games into his eight-game audition as Colts head coach, sitting on the realities of a 1-3 record, Saturday was asked if he still wants this job full-time.

“I plan on interviewing, as long as they give me the interview,” Saturday said. “I’ve enjoyed the heck out of this. Again, I’m not discouraged at all. I have a vision of what this could look like in the future.”

Irsay is ultimately the only person with the power to take off Saturday’s interim tag and make him the franchise’s full-time head coach, and the Colts owner’s line of thinking isn’t always conventional.

But Irsay is also the man who set the standard for evaluating Saturday’s interim tenure in his explanation for his decision to fire former head coach Frank Reich.

“I’ve seen things go from bad to worse,” Irsay said. “I thought it was time, and it was necessary to make the change.”

Irsay was looking for a turnaround.

A desire made clear in a follow-up joint interview with Fox59 and The Athletic where he rejected any talk of the Colts tanking, although he walked back his optimism later in an ESPN interview by saying he knew Saturday wouldn’t be a “miracle worker.”

Irsay also opened Saturday’s tenure by saying the long-time Colts center was the only man for the job, and that a move wouldn’t have happened if Saturday wasn’t available.

The Colts owner believed Saturday had a chance to turn things around.

“You’re just responsible for giving your team the best chance to win,” Irsay said. “But I’m not sending a fighter into the ring I love when I think that it’s time and let him get pummeled.”

Halfway through Saturday’s audition, the turnaround the Colts needed to get back in the playoff race hasn’t happened.

Under Reich, the Colts were 3-3-1 with veteran Matt Ryan as the starting quarterback, before an Irsay-influenced decision put Sam Ehlinger under center for two games, both losses — a decision Saturday immediately overturned, inserting Ryan back into the starting lineup in the biggest move of his tenure so far.

With Ryan at the helm, Indianapolis is 1-3 under Saturday so far, a win over the Raiders in his debut mitigated by three consecutive losses to the Eagles, Steelers and Cowboys that have sent the Colts stumbling out of playoff contention.

Evaluating Saturday’s role in the team’s continued downward trajectory is complicated, given the relatively small sample size.

Saturday has routinely been praised for the way he’s handled a difficult situation.

“I think he is consistent, he’s passionate, he’s obviously got a great understanding of what it’s like to be a player and comes from that lens. …. I think Jeff leans towards that player’s lens in how he approaches things,” Ryan said. “Given a really difficult circumstance and a unique deck of cards that he was dealt, he’s done a really good job.”

His biggest decision, going with Ryan at quarterback, was initially lauded for the steadying presence the veteran quarterback brought against an awful Raiders defense, but the decision has been questioned in recent weeks as Ryan slips back into the mistake-prone player whose inability to avoid turnovers cost the Colts dearly in the first seven games of the season.

Saturday is sticking with Ryan, believing the veteran gives the Colts a better chance to win than Ehlinger or veteran backup Nick Foles.

“Matt is going to be our guy going in Saturday,” Saturday said. “I think he’s battled.”

More:Why Colts interim coach Jeff Saturday says he's sticking with Matt Ryan at quarterback

Ryan has been plagued all year long by a Colts offensive line that has struggled to protect, and despite Saturday’s obvious experience, the line’s results have been mixed as well. A one-sack performance — again, playing a bad Raiders pass rush — has been followed up by 10 sacks in three games, particularly key pressures late in games.

The way the Colts have played late in games should also be noted. While Indianapolis has gotten off to faster starts in Saturday’s four games at the helm after struggling to get out of the blocks all season, the Colts have failed to finish games in the fourth quarter since then, culminating with a 33-0 fourth-quarter run by the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football before the bye.

Under Ryan, the Colts closed games fairly well early in the season, earning all three wins and the tie in the season’s first half by roaring back at the end.

“I’m disappointed we haven’t finished some games better, right?” Saturday said. “I felt in Philly we let one get away, Pittsburgh we didn’t play well enough, and then obviously, Dallas, where it’s a two-point game and we end up getting the doors blown off of us.”

From an X’s and O’s standpoint, Saturday has played a role in the Colts simplifying their playbook and focusing heavily on the run, a decision that has both produced mixed results and wasn’t available to Indianapolis when Jonathan Taylor was battling a sprained ankle early in the season.

Taylor’s raw yardage totals have been a little better.

But the Colts have also run the ball so much that teams know what’s coming, and it’s been a grind in the second half of games, contributing to the offense’s inability to score or finish games. Saturday has also been criticized for failing to use a timeout late against Pittsburgh, for a reluctance to toss his challenge flag against Dallas, and he hasn’t been able to rectify the team’s season-long penchant for turning the ball over.

“Having to come in, trying to fix what’s been going on, that’s a tough position to be in,” defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said.

Saturday has drawn praise, both from the locker room and the coaching staff, for the energy he’s brought to the role, for his leadership, intelligence and for his style of accountability, an area that Saturday has mentioned he was hired to address, in part.

Famously vocal throughout his career in Indianapolis, Saturday has brought the same style of accountability to the Colts.

But the players in the locker room and the coaching staff has also made it a point to say that energy and accountability were not weaknesses for Reich.

“I don’t think that it’s changed, I think that it’s maybe addressed differently,” running backs coach Scottie Montgomery said. “I think that these guys have been held accountable, but the way that it’s being addressed (is different).”

The good news is the audition is not over.

Saturday still has a chance to put his stamp on this team.

The Colts have four games left, a four-game finishing stretch that includes three games against teams fighting for playoff positioning and their playoff lives.

“I’ll be honest with you, as expected, I knew this was going to be a challenge,” Saturday said. “At some point this is about we have to go make the plays that we are capable of making. That’s what I’ve tried to (use to) fuel the guys. I’m disappointed, definitely not discouraged. When I look at this football team and this staff, I think we’re making progress in areas, I think we’re getting better in areas. From my viewpoint, I have to look at it and keep it in perspective of what it looks like. I didn’t think I would come in and win every game. I’d love to say that, but that’s probably not realistic when you looked at this thing.”

From a realistic viewpoint, the Colts are going to need more than the final four games to get back to where they want to be.

Saturday would like to be a part of that.

Only time, and maybe these final four games, will tell if he gets that chance.