Jim Bob Cooter likely needs to leave the Indianapolis Colts to get out of the shadow of head coach Shane Steichen. Not that Steichen is a bad person or difficult to work with, because he isn't. But he also makes the offensive play calls, and the offensive coordinator doesn't.
That means any team thinking about hiring Indy OC Jim Bobo Cooter is taking a bit of a leap of faith. Cooter may be a fantastic offensive coordinator and an amazing play-caller, but teams can only guess at the second part. At least, he has partly learned under Steichen, who has a well-respected offensive approach.
The Philadelphia Eagles are one team kicking the proverbial tires on adding Cooter as their OC. He would need the title of associate head coach, too, most likely, because otherwise he would simply be making a lateral move. At least, on paper. In reality, he'd get a promotion simply by calling the plays.
If the Indianapolis Colts lose Jim Bob Cooter, might they hire an OC who was just fired by the Philadelphia Eagles?
Still, we aren't there yet. No team has chosen to hire Cooter, so the expectation should be that he returns to the Colts in 2026. If he does leave, Locked on Colts host Zach Hicks has a bunch of suggestions about who could replace him. One is Kevin Patullo, formerly of the Eagles.
In other words, the Colts and Philly would basically just be trading OCs from 2025, but Indianapolis would get the far worse part of it. After all, the Eagles might want to hire Cooter, but they just fired Patullo because he was fairly awful this season.
After ranking in the top 10 of the league in scoring and total yards since 2022, including having an offense capable of winning the Super Bowl in 2024, Philadelphia's offense fell to 24th in 2025. The difference between previous seasons and this one? Kevin Patullo.
To be fair, Hicks has a logical reason for Indianapolis potentially hiring Patullo if Cooter moves on. That is that Patullo worked under Shane Steichen when both were with the Eagles in 2021 and 2022. Steichen was the offensive coordinator, and Patullo was the passing game coordinator.
Patullo also wouldn't be calling the plays, and Steichen doing so makes the Indianapolis Colts hiring someone from outside the organization with no ties to the head coach more difficult. A new, but experienced, offensive coordinator would want to call the plays. Patullo might be OK with not doing so.
The issue is that the Colts need to do everything they can to sell fans on the hope that 2026 will be better than the team has been in a decade. Indianapolis hasn't won the AFC South since 2014. A move to hire a recently fired offensive coordinator doesn't exactly scream that the team is headed in the right direction.