The Indianapolis Colts reportedly are expected to hire Josh McDaniels as their new head coach after the New England Patriots offensive coordinator wraps up his current playoff run with Bill Belichick’s staff.
And that isn’t sitting well with Gregg Doyel of The Indianapolis Star.
Doyel wrote a scathing column Monday in which he lambasted the Colts for potentially hiring McDaniels, who failed in his first stint as an NFL head coach — he went 11-17 over parts of two seasons with the Denver Broncos in 2009 and 2010 — before ultimately returning to New England, where he already had been the offensive coordinator earlier in his coaching career.
Doyel wrote:
“Josh McDaniels will get a second chance, but not a clean slate. That isn’t how these things work, not for any of us. We get a clean slate just once, same as Josh McDaniels, and his came in 2009 when he was hired to coach the Denver Broncos. And in less than two years he spray-painted so much graffiti on there that the Broncos fired him for a variety of reasons, so take your pick: his abrasive personality, his horrific judgment of talent, his team’s penchant for losing games, or those broken NFL rules.”
McDaniels has been a hot commodity on the NFL coaching market, having interviewed for several positions over the last couple of years. Doyel doesn’t understand the appeal, though. Because while the Patriots have enjoyed plenty of success with McDaniels as their offensive coordinator, Doyel attributes that to being surrounded by Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady more than anything else. And the feisty columnist believes McDaniels’ shaky tenure in Denver simply shouldn’t be overlooked.
Doyel added:
And I still can’t believe this is happening. Can’t believe McDaniels will soon be hired by the Colts, and entrusted with Andrew Luck. Can’t believe he was the hottest commodity on the coaching market this fall. McDaniels is Lane Kiffin to me, an arrogant young punk who ascended rapidly after Daddy got him a cherry first job in coaching – McDaniels’ father, Ohio high school legend Thom McDaniels, was friends with Nick Saban, who hired Josh as a grad assistant at Michigan State in 1999 – and who kept getting promoted to the point of failure.
Monte Kiffin’s boy needed four tries to find a semblance of success – Lane flopped in the NFL with Oakland and in college with Tennessee and USC – but he failed three times before going 11-3 in his first season at FAU. Weis, Mangini and Crennel also got second chances as head coaches. They also failed. Most retreads do. Losers lose. Bill Belichick is an exception.
The basic question Doyel kept circling back to: Why?
That’s a question Colts general manager Chris Ballard might need to answer in the coming weeks, and it’s one that Doyel probably will continue to wrestle with until his skepticism is proven wrong, at which point he’ll just find another Patriots-related topic to get butthurt about.
