INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Interim Indianapolis Colts coach Jeff Saturday spent Monday night defending his team’s late game clock management.
Less than 24 hours later, he admitted making the wrong decision.
After watching video of the match, thinking back on the situation, and thinking about what could have been done differently, Saturday basically admitted he made a rookie coaching mistake.
“I would have liked to have this third try back. In all honesty, I would have liked to use a time out. I watched it on film – I watched it again last night, I watched it again this morning, he said Tuesday. Time-wise, I felt good. But you could see we were in disarray. Looking back, it’s a learning experience. »
Maybe that’s to be expected from someone who has no coaching experience at professional or college level and wasn’t even on the team until November.
Saturday isn’t the only one having learning difficulties this season at Indy (4-7-1).
Parks Frazier, who is in his first experience, thought he could catch Pittsburgh off guard with a quick play on third down and 3 at the last minute.
Instead, miscommunication forced the Colts to line up incorrectly, costing them a precious 29 seconds and ultimately the game.
The Colts spent most of the first half of the season trying to fix their offensive line leaks before settling for rookie Bernhard Raimann at left tackle and sophomore Will Fries at left tackle. right guard.
Quarterback Sam Ehlinger lost his first two NFL starts despite only one turnover.
He was still sacked 11 times before Matt Ryan took over the starting job. Ryan produced solid performances in Saturday’s first two games as coach before committing two more turnovers in Monday’s 24-17 loss.
“I thought we could start faster than we did, it’s up to me to understand the personnel in the game, the formations we were in and the guys coming back to their natural positions where they’re going to line up. , said Saturday. I thought we had the advantage, but unfortunately we should have called a timeout, which would have given us our best game, our best opportunity. »
