Doyel: After so much nonsense,
https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...e/70093361007/
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INDIANAPOLIS – The Indianapolis Colts have seen some nonsense. You and I think we’ve seen nonsense from this franchise, but imagine being the Colts, the players, veterans like DeForest Buckner and Zaire Franklin and Michael Pittman Jr. They’ve seen quarterbacks come and go, failures at leadership or football or both. They’ve seen coaches come and go, too.
Hell, they shared a locker room with Jeff Saturday.
How did this team feel about Saturday, after getting to know him? Nobody will say this, so let me: All those historic losses to end the season, a collection of collapsing and choking and outright quitting, don’t lie.
Into this void of trust, that void of leadership, comes Shane Steichen. He’s the Colts’ new coach. This is his locker room now, and it’s a locker room that needs to be convinced. All NFL locker rooms feel that way, up to a point, including this one last fall when Jeff Saturday showed up and Franklin, the veteran linebacker and co-captain, was the one person – the only person, come to think of it – saying this:
“Trust has to be earned over time.”
Remember that? I do, vividly, because it stuck out. We were there the day the Colts introduced Saturday to their locker room. Local reporters, I’m saying. We were there, bouncing from player to player, asking for their impression of Saturday. He’d made a great first team speech, everyone agreed, a great first impression.
All-Pro guard Quenton Nelson said the offensive line was on board. All-Pro defensive lineman DeForest Buckner said that list included more guys than that – himself included.
“I was feeling it, and I know a lot of guys were too,” Buckner said on Nov. 9, one of the darker days in franchise history. It was the day the coup was complete, Jim Irsay’s trusted advisor Jeff Saturday snaking the coaching job out from underneath Frank Reich with his folksy, fork-tongued charm, then fooling the locker room into believing in him.
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Over the next few months, the Colts saw some nonsense. Three different starting quarterbacks, none of them good enough. Multiple offensive coordinators – ditto. An interim coach, followed by arguably the most thorough coaching search in NFL history.
The Colts won’t be fooled twice. Remember how Buckner said he was “feeling it” last year after meeting Jeff Saturday? He went onto say, “I'm excited to have him, see how this thing shakes out."
That was Buckner’s first impression of Jeff Saturday. That was Nov. 9, 2022.
Here was Buckner’s first impression of Shane Steichen. This was Wednesday:
“It’s exciting. It’s a great fresh start,” Buckner said, then slowed his roll. Maybe he was remembering Nov. 9. Whatever the case, he kept going, but he no longer sounded excited. Now he sounded skeptical. Now he sounded almost tired.
“Honestly,” he said, “every head coach, they’re (talking about) establishing the culture, what they believe in. You know it’s real when they practice what they preach and live up to what they’ve been saying. … Time will tell.”
Is it me, or did it just get cold in here?
Colts coach Shane Steichen (left) and Colts general manager Chris Ballard
Shane Steichen: 'I'm all ball'
The Colts’ nonsense radar is on full alert.
Pittman likes Steichen a lot, but he knows he’s coming at it from a biased perspective. He plays offense, and Steichen’s last job was offensive coordinator in Philadelphia. Catching 100 passes in a season is among Pittman’s goals, and while on Wednesday he said he’d rather not go into detail about Steichen’s offense, he conceded: “I will say he’s very excited about the passing game.”
Pause.
“I love that,” Pittman said.
Now then, Pittman understands, the defensive players will need more time.
“For the whole team,” Pitt would add later, “we’ve just got to get into camp. The guys have to feel him out. Defensive guys haven’t had too much chance to hear him. … They really haven’t had a good chance to feel him out.”
Franklin, who met with reporters moments after Pittman, unknowingly confirmed what the receiver had just said.
“I’m one of those guys, I set back and see how things play out in front of me,” Franklin said.
The Colts’ nonsense radar is on full alert, as I’ve said, but here’s some good news: Shane Steichen seems devoid of nonsense.
He seems devoid of interests beyond football, to be honest, though he does have a wife and children, and they see a side the rest of us probably never will. As for what Steichen shows the public, even the players and coaches and front office, it’s one-dimensional.
“I’m all ball,” he says, and I believe him. While Reich and Pagano and even Saturday had their interests outside of football, Steichen might not. A conversation with him, I’ve heard from people in NFL cities – people who would know – can be difficult unless you throw a steady diet of football talk at him. Steichen eats up football talk, and gives it back.
He's all ball, which leaves very little room for nonsense. Steichen is long and angular, taller than you think, but if there’s a political bone in that body, I’d be stunned. To play politics, as each Colts coach dating to Chuck Pagano could do well, you have to be concerned about things beyond football. Not sure Steichen is.
The locker room will love that.
“I can’t see them not,” Pittman said.
DeForest Buckner: Colts needed a 'reset'
The Colts have redecorated the place on 56th Street, which is nice. New colors on the walls, with previous mantras, vestiges from past coaches, gone. Probably smells like fresh paint in there. Definitely smells like a fresh start.
“The vibe’s a lot of different compared to that last week,” Buckner said, referring to the team’s seven consecutive loss, and 10th in 11 games, to end the 2022 season.
“When you have season like that,” Pittman said, “you’re glad that it’s over.”
This franchise needed a “reset,” as Buckner called it, saying of an alternative word, rebuild: “I hate that word.”
Steichen is that reset, a coach unlike any in franchise history. Younger, more innovative, more serious. More protective, too. No NFL coach gives away information for free, but most play the game with local reporters, saying a whole lot to mask that they’ve actually said nothing.
Not Steichen.
“I won’t go into that,” he said, or some variation of that, at least a half-dozen times Wednesday, including twice in one answer.
He’s all ball, this guy. No nonsense. I think it’ll play well.
“I’m gonna be who I am,” Steichen said, “just a passionate guy who loves ball. I want to feed the positive, weed out the negative.
And he said: "I love the X's and O's part of it – teaching these guys, being around the guys, creating the connections part of it. There ain’t nothing like it. I think it’s the best job in America to do what we do as coaches and players, to be in the National Football League."
And he said, to a question about something other than the guys in the building:
“I’m focused on the guys in the building.”
Insider: Shane Steichen shuts down Lamar Jackson question
A lot to like here, especially if you play for the Colts and want a coach whose obsession for football can match – and probably exceed – yours. The nonsense meter has been revving high around here for years, but the Colts seem to have hired a coach incapable of nonsense. I’ll remind you, however, of something Zaire Franklin said on Nov. 9, 2022.
Actually, Franklin can remind you. Because he said it again on Wednesday, when asked about his new coach:
“Trust has to be earned over time.”
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04-12-2023, 09:58 PM
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