Why the Colts hired Frank Reich as their new coach after the Josh McDaniels disaster

INDIANAPOLIS – Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich has been officially hired to be the Indianapolis Colts' next head coach, the team announced Sunday, bringing the their adventurous coaching search to an expected conclusion.

A week after his team won Super Bowl LII, Reich is in line to finally fill the Colts' vacancy.

And you can thank the crazy series of recent events for bringing about this development.

When Josh McDaniels stiffed the Colts and reneged on an oral agreement last week to become the team’s next head coach, General Manager Chris Ballard said he would simply revert to his original list and begin meeting with candidates he had not interviewed in the first round.

But even a cursory look at the candidates the Colts have considered in recent days shows the Colts did not simply pick up where they left off.

And it is this change of course that brought the Colts to Reich.

There was a clear contrast between the second round of candidates and those targeted immediately after former coach Chuck Pagano was fired six weeks ago. Gone were the shiny objects like McDaniels, the talented but flawed Patriots offensive coordinator, and Matt Nagy, the young, up-and-coming but unproven former Kansas City offensive coordinator.

They were replaced in this round by the likes of Buffalo’s Leslie Frazier, a veteran and steady hand in the Tony Dungy mold, who once led the Minnesota Vikings. Also interviewed was the Saints’ Dan Campbell, perhaps not an X’s and O’s wizard like McDaniels, but a coach who would instill toughness and leadership for a franchise that needs to get back on track.

Finally, there was the 56-year-old Reich the Eagles’ Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator who is the picture of calm and a former minister. Reich has worked for four NFL teams since his first foray into coaching with the Colts 12 years ago. He’s been an offensive coordinator for the Eagles and Chargers though this would be his first chance at becoming a head coach.

Ballard didn’t characterize the kind of candidate he would target when he held his post-McDaniels disaster news conference on Wednesday but, rest assured, this shift is not simply coincidental.

It was, as a key source explained, absolutely intentional.

Ballard surely had a long list of possibilities before he originally began his search but, interestingly, he pinpointed a certain sort of candidate the first time around.

This time, Ballard went for proven leadership.

"Frank is a leader of men who will demand excellence from our players on and off the field," Ballard said in a statement released by the team. "I look forward to working with Frank to deliver a championship-caliber team to the city of Indianapolis."

Said owner Jim Irsay, also in a statement: "We are extremely excited to announce Frank Reich as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. Frank has all the ingredients of a successful head coach: intelligence, innovation, character, organizational and leadership skills, and a commanding presence. He also has a stellar reputation, and his myriad of life experiences and the people he has worked with make him the perfect fit for us and our fans. I feel extremely fortunate and could not be more excited for Colts Nation and the future of our franchise."

Who knows if the Colts got this hire right. Some viewed McDaniels as a possible home run, but given his last-minute change of heart and broken promises, that might have been a mirage.

There are no promises in a proposition like this. NFL coaches come and go like office assistants hired by temp agencies. A majority of the men who get these jobs will fail at these jobs.

But that’s all the more reason why you have to have conviction about who you hire. And the makeup of the second list of candidates makes you wonder how much conviction Ballard really had about his first group of targets. Did he get distracted and caught up in fancy schemes? Did he set out to emulate the Los Angeles Rams’ success with Sean McVay, the youngest coach in the NFL at 32 who turned out to be a brilliant hire?

Whatever the case, Ballard has settled on Reich, an assistant who has slowly climbed the ranks since entering the NFL as a coaching intern with the Colts on Dungy’s staff in 2006. Within two years, he was Peyton Manning’s quarterbacks coach and came to develop a close relationship with the former Colts great. The son of two former public school teachers in central Pennsylvania, Reich has said he has always had teaching in his blood.

This is not to say that McDaniels would have failed. Maybe Nagy would’ve worked out. For all we know, Mike Vrabel – one of two initial finalists who eventually became the Tennessee Titans’ coach after just one season as Houston’s defensive coordinator – would have been a great hire.

But the McDaniels situation sent Ballard back to the drawing board. And what he came up when he did that was something quite different than he initially planned.

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