‘He’s not a head coach’: Can you guess who that’s about after the Colts vs. Raiders game?
The Indianapolis Colts beat the Las Vegas Raiders 25-20 in Jeff Saturday's debut as an NFL coach, leaving many perplexed.
There's little debate about what that result means for the Raiders and coach Josh McDaniels (who, infamously, spurned the Colts in 2018).
Here's national reaction from this strange game.
Doyel: This Colts victory is for everyone who doubted Jeff Saturday
Connor Orr, Sports Illustrated
On the Colts
Next, an admission of sorts: I have absolutely no idea how to feel about Jeff Saturday winning his first game as a head coach. The range of possibilities in my head right now is too vast: Maybe Colts owner Jim Irsay is a genius and Saturday is a really good football coach? Maybe Saturday’s headset was actually just a doctored up Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone connected to nothing, and John Fox was running the whole deal? Maybe it’s not super hard to coach an NFL football game and we should all try it sometime? We need a bigger sample size.
On the Raiders
Now, onto the part where we say what everyone else must be thinking: McDaniels lost a game to a person who has never coached at any level in the NFL before and, in terms of optics, this is about as bad as it gets.
Jim Trotter, NFL.com
Irsay was vindicated, if only for a week, but let us not forget that the Colts defeated the 2-7 Raiders, who have lost three in a row and four of five. The case can be made that the Raiders have been the league's biggest disappointment, sometimes lacking focus, other times direction and other times confidence. Losing to an Indianapolis team that had lost three in a row and was breaking in a coaching newbie added meat on that bone.
If Saturday did something that his counterpart Josh McDaniels did not, it was getting his players and coaches to believe in each other. There continues to be murmurs of discontent within the Las Vegas locker room as the losses mount, and the only way to silence them is by winning.
Nate Davis, USA TODAY
On the Colts
What a Sunday for Jeff Saturday. His hiring as the Indianapolis Colts' interim head coach engendered shock, ridicule, outrage and anger, among other emotions, across the country and NFL itself. But the man who simply accepted a job offer and handled a fraught situation with his signature class ends the week 1-0.
On the Raiders
The Colts may be better off with Saturday than already embattled first-year Silver and Black coach Josh McDaniels, who backed out on the Indianapolis HC job after it was offered four years ago.
Peter King, Football Morning in America
Jeff Saturday has the best winning percentage in Colts’ history. He’s had a week to tell the grandchildren about. I gave him every chance to fire back at his detractors, and not only would he not do it, but he understands why they are firing. “I love coaches,” he told me after the 25-20 win over the Raiders in the first NFL head-coaching game of his life. “I get why people question this. But for the last week, I’m watching all the coaches on our staff, and these super-smart people with very defined roles are doing things so well, and I’m so impressed. It was like watching an orchestra.”
Jeff Kerr, CBS Sports
On the Raiders
The Raiders' last three weeks have gone like this: Shut out by Saints, blew 17-point lead to Jaguars, lost to a head coach in his first game coaching with no professional or college experience. This is a 2-7 Raiders team that has given up 20-plus points in every game this season, has a quarterback upset over the team's performance, and has no sense of direction on either side of the ball.
This is a bad football team that isn't getting better. Remember, the Raiders made the playoffs last season and added Chandler Jones and Davante Adams to their roster. McDaniels needs to be let go -- he's not an NFL head coach.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts' win in Jeff Saturday's debut says more about Josh McDaniels
