The Colts tried to hire Josh McDaniels to be there head coach, and as we all know he pulled out of that agreement. How will this situation affect future coaching hires?
The Colts thought they had their head coach of the future. They had talked with Josh McDaniels all throughout the post-season, and had an agreement laid out for him to be the next head coach of the Colts. Then it all fell apart.
McDaniels called GM Chris Ballard to tell him that he was going to stay in New England. The Colts then scrambled to hire a new coach. Thankfully for Colts fans, they got a good one in Frank Reich. But this situation will almost certainly have an effect on future coaches who go deep into the post-season.
Teams should think twice about hiring coordinators who go deep into the post-season after this debacle. Most teams won’t get bailed out by a good candidate being available late in the hiring season like Reich.
The main lesson in this whole situation is that teams need to do an excellent job vetting their coaching candidates. McDaniels clearly was not the man of integrity that Indianapolis thought that he was. General Managers will need to completely vet their coaches before they feel comfortable hiring them.
It will be interesting next off-season to see how teams go about hiring top coordinators. If teams are afraid to hire coordinators who go deep into the playoffs, the quality of head coaches could potentially go down.
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Ultimately, we won’t know what the total effect of this situation will be until next off-season rolls around. What is almost certain is that McDaniels is not going to get another head coaching opportunity outside of New England. Hopefully for coordinators that have deep playoff runs, McDaniels didn’t ruin their chances at getting a future head coaching opportunities.