The Jeff Saturday Thing Proves Socialism Is Right
Just like I've been saying...
You never want to draw too many lessons from one example, but last week’s hiring of Jeff Saturday to coach the Indianapolis Colts really proves that I’m right about everything.
In case you missed it, the Colts, who had been off to a disappointing 3-5-1 start to the season, fired their head coach Frank Reich last Monday, and announced that Jeff Saturday would be his interim replacement. Hiring Saturday wasn’t EXACTLY like hiring someone off the street – Saturday was an elite offensive lineman for the Colts for more than a decade, making six Pro Bowls and winning a Super Bowl in 2007, and he’s a member of the team’s “Ring of Honor.”
But Saturday had never coached, in any capacity, at the college or pro level. His only coaching experience at all was three seasons coaching high school football in Georgia, and he quit that job over two years ago. He’s spent most of the last three years as a TV analyst. It’s the first time an NFL head coach has been hired without any prior experience as an NFL or college coach since the Minnesota Vikings hired Norm Van Brocklin in 1961.
The reactions to the hiring ranged from puzzled to apoplectic. Saturday is generally well-liked and well-respected, but the choice to pass over a bunch of more qualified candidates for someone with no experience seemed like an insult. Bill Cowher called the decision a “disgrace to the coaching profession.” Rex Ryan called it “disrespectful.” Joe Thomas called it “the most egregious thing I can ever remember happening in the NFL” (which seems like a bit of an overstatement).
And then, of course, in Saturday’s first game as the coach, the Colts went out and upset the Las Vegas Raiders, winning 25-20.
Now, obviously, one win does not justify a coaching hire, and that game likely says more about how bad this year has been for the Raiders than it says about the Colts or about Saturday’s abilities as a coach. But obviously this validates everything I’ve been saying about how sports proves socialism is right. Let’s just go through each piece one at a time, shall we?
1) Owners have too much power. Saturday obviously got this job because he’s friends with Colts owner Jim Irsay. Nobody is even trying to pretend otherwise. Executives in the Colts front office reportedly tried to talk Irsay out of the hire, but the owner, who has apparently tried to hire his former player multiple times for multiple roles since the Saturday retired in 2013, was hell-bent on his decision. Irsay even said that Saturday’s lack of experience was really a good thing:
“I am glad he doesn’t have any NFL experience. I’m glad he hasn’t learned the fear that’s in this league because it’s tough for all of our coaches… He doesn’t have that fear and there was no other candidate.”
It’s unusual for owners to say things like this quite so openly, but this dynamic is at play in every coaching (job) search, as long as the owners (read: the capitalist class) have absolute power over hiring and firing. Normally, the hiring process is drawn out longer, so it gets dressed up as a fair, objective process, but it really always comes down to who the owner likes. Sometimes he “likes” the person who is best for the job, but more often he likes the guy who plays golf with, or who flatters him the most, or who makes him feel smart. Piss the owner off, and you’ll get fired. (As I write this, Elon Musk is publicly firing Twitter employees who hurt his feelings.) This is just what I’ve been saying…
It is tempting to think that the owners’ interests are always aligned with the organization at large – after all, Jim Irsay wants to win, doesn’t he? So he will presumably hire the “best man for the job.” But this is mostly wishful thinking, in part because owners have other, selfish interests that they are catering to, and in part because owners are often just dumb and wrong about who the best person for the job is.
Which brings us to our next point…
2) Meritocracy will not save you. The heated reaction to Saturday’s hiring stemmed from a basic sense that this was unfair to all the assistant coaches who toil in the NFL, waiting for an opportunity to lead a team. The former coaches who blasted the move, like Ryan and Cowher, did so by bringing up all the years they themselves spent as assistants and coordinators before getting the chance to lead a team, not to mention all the coaches they had on their own staffs who were NEVER given such an opportunity. It’s insulting to all that work to simply bring in someone off the proverbial streets, and then announce that all the coaches doing that work are only “learning the fear that it’s the league.”
But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Obviously it’s too early to tell if hiring Saturday will work out for Indianapolis. One win is only one win. But it’s a reminder that, on some level, coaching skill is a mystery. Bill Belichick is the generally considered the best football coach ever, but he still wasn’t the right fit in Cleveland in the early ‘90s, when his teams finished below .500 four times in five years.
Historically, experience has not been a very reliable predictor of success for NFL head coaches. Jeff Saturday’s counterpart on Sunday, Josh McDaniels of the Raiders, has spent the last ten years as an assistant on Belichick’s staff, and was a head coach before that. But his hiring has been a disaster for Las Vegas, who are now 2-7 after making the playoffs last year. On the other hand, the first place team in Indianapolis’ division – the Tennessee Titans – is coached by Mike Vrabel, who had only one year as an NFL coordinator and had never been a head coach at any level before he was hired in 2018, and he’s led Tennessee to the playoffs each of the last three seasons.
It’s tempting to believe that owners won’t make stupid, irrational hires because they won’t want to hurt their organization, but the truth is you never really know what will work, and so owners will always be able to convince themselves that their dumb ideas are Actually Smart. This is true for all jobs like this. By “like this,” I don’t just mean other professional coaching jobs – I mean any job that is high-status and highly paid, but where skill is hard to quantify and success depends on so many environmental contingencies. For any job that meets this description, it is so difficult to pin down what “merit” even means, that it ends up being determined by the whims of the owners.
In other words…
3) A coach’s job IS to do whatever pleases the owners. As I said, the main reason the Colts won Sunday is that the Raiders are really bad this year. But ANOTHER reason is the Colts started Matt Ryan at quarterback instead of Sam Ehlinger, the second-year QB who started the previous two games (both losses). Ryan is obviously not as good as he once was, but at this moment he’s better than Ehlinger, and he gives the Colts a better chance to win now.
Still, Ryan was benched a few weeks ago, as the Colts wanted to give the young Ehlinger a chance. Frank Reich insisted that was his decision, but there were indications that the move was really pushed for by the owner, Jim Irsay. Once Saturday took the job, though, he told Irsay he was going to start Ryan, and Irsay relented out of deference to his chosen coach.
In other words, what made Saturday successful was his ability to placate a demanding owner who is known for meddling with his team. That’s not nothing! Indeed, the essential skill of nearly every professional class job is making sure owners like you. But it’s not actually a skill that makes a football team any better, and speaks more to the deleterious effect of ownership than the value provided by a coach. In other words, a big part of Saturday’s job isn’t about making his team better – it’s about making sure the owner doesn’t make his team worse.
When you put all these things together, the lesson to me is pretty clear: The power of owners needs to be checked by the liberation of the working class. Long live the revolution…