One of the chief reasons why the Houston Texans didn’t hire Josh McCown in the 2021 and 2022 coaching cycles was because of the former NFL quarterback’s absence of coaching experience.
Before hiring coach David Culley, McCown got an interview with the Texans for the fourth full-time coaching gig in team history. The former Sam Houston State product was going to go straight from being a backup quarterback for the organization to the top job on the sidelines.
Before the Texans decided to promote Lovie Smith to coach, Houston interviewed McCown once more in 2022. The second courtship was particularly perturbing for fans because McCown didn’t spend 2021 on an NFL sideline or gaining coaching experience at the collegiate level. Houston was essentially going to try a callow McCown as their coach after the Culley experiment failed.
The Indianapolis Colts have a knack for upstaging the Texans and finding a way to outdo them. The Colts are doing it once again with the hiring of former Pro Bowl center and Super Bowl champion Jeff Saturday as their interim coach following the firing of coach Frank Reich.
Saturday has spent the last 10 years out of football. The last time Saturday was on the field was in 2012 with the Green Bay Packers. Since then, Saturday has been a studio analyst for ESPN and their NFL coverage.
At 3-5-1, the Colts’ playoff hopes may be cooked. Even though the Tennessee Titans are 5-3, the Colts lost the season series to the Titans and subsequently the tiebreaker. As the AFC East appears to be running away with the wild-card spots, winning the AFC South may be Indianapolis’ only way to make the playoffs.
And they decided to go with an interim coach with no coaching experience.
Given that the Colts have now hit the barbed wire, it may not be far fetched the think the Texans follow suit with another McCown flirtation after the season.
