Frank Reich has been fired as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. His tenure lasted more than four seasons and featured a 40-33-1 regular season record but only one playoff win.
It’s a move that encapsulates the post-Peyton Manning era of frustration in Indiana. Reich was supposed to bring a Super Bowl-winning philosophy to an offense led by Andrew Luck.
Instead, he had only one season with the team’s franchise quarterback before his abrupt 2019 retirement. The years since dropped a rotating cast of underwhelming passers at his door and led to a bunch of teams that were good, but not nearly good enough to threaten the rest of the AFC when it mattered most.
The main surprise about Reich’s ousting is the timing. While he’s in the midst of a three-game losing streak and just got pummeled by a Patriots team with a mostly theoretical passing offense 26-3, he had team owner Jim Irsay’s support just a week earlier.
One week ago, Irsay told Mortensen and Rapoport that Reich was “safe.” This organization is a dysfunctional mess. https://t.co/G4TLfwBETa
— Bob Kravitz (@bkravitz) November 7, 2022
Going 0-16 on third and fourth down with a second-year backup quarterback will have that effect. Reich’s fate wasn’t sealed by nine (!) Sam Ehlinger sacks in Week 9, however. He was done in by a revolving door of passers he was incapable of pushing to new heights. Reich’s epitaph was written the day Andrew Luck retired, but no one realized it until years later.
Let’s take a look back at the quarterbacks he rode with into battle, how they failed, and how this made Frank Reich 2022’s second head coach firing.
2018: Andrew Luck
Defensive DVOA rank: 11
Offensive DVOA rank: 10
Record: 10-6
This year produced Reich’s lone postseason victory and set the table for what was supposed to be an Indianapolis renaissance. There were warning signs, of course. The Colts ran into the Kansas City Chiefs’ buzzsaw in the Divisional Round and scored just one offensive touchdown in a 31-13 loss. Andrew Luck and company racked up just 266 total yards against a defense that ranked 31st in yards allowed that season.
Still, Luck was 29 years old, the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year and coming off his most efficient season as a passer. That year’s draft added Quenton Nelson, Shaquille Leonard and Braden Smith to the roster. Even if the passing offense was merely above average with Luck, this team was still in a good place.
Let’s take a look at how Reich’s quarterbacks performed over the course of each season using the NFL’s Next Gen Stats models for efficiency — namely expected points added (EPA) and completion percentage over expected (CPOE). These charts, courtesy of the immensely helpful RBSDM.com, track each starting QB over the course of the season. A spot in the top right quadrant means an above-average player. A spot in the bottom right means your guy probably stunk. Spoiler alert: Luck is the only Colt to land in that prosperous quadrant in Reich’s reign.
2019: Jacoby Brissett
Defensive DVOA rank: 19
Offensive DVOA rank: 19
Record: 7-9
You could argue 2019 was Reich’s finest campaign as a head coach. His franchise quarterback retired in the preseason, forcing him to throw backup Brissett into the fire (along with Brian Hoyer). Somehow, this team still started out 5-2 before a leg injury sapped Brissett’s effectiveness as both a passer and runner, leading to a 2-7 crash out of playoff contention.
The Colts found a way to beat three playoff teams in 2019 despite starting a longterm backup for most of the season. Unfortunately, cracks were beginning to show that suggested more work needed to be done than just finding a new starter behind center. The WR/TE corps had little depth behind an aging TY Hilton. That year’s draft offered basically nothing from the team’s top three picks (Rock Ya-Sin, Ben Banogu, Parris Campbell).
2020: Philip Rivers
Defensive DVOA rank: 7
Offensive DVOA rank: 12
Record: 11-5
Rivers wasn’t supposed to be a long-term solution, but there was hope he’d stick around after piloting Indianapolis to the playoffs. GM Chris Ballard made an all-in splash by trading his first round pick for DeForest Buckner that spring. Buckner delivered with 9.5 sacks in a first-team All-Pro season and helped give the Colts a top 10 defense.
This ultimately didn’t matter. Rivers was roughly the same quarterback he’d been as a Charger but struggled against good teams, recording a 4:7 TD:INT ratio in his five regular season losses. Indy dipped out in the Wild Card round after Rivers’ last-ditch two minute drill covered only 39 yards in 11 plays. His final NFL pass is one of the saddest Hail Marys recorded on video.
What a game!#Bills win their first playoff game in over 20 years!
But it came down to the last play of the game.
A #Colts Rivers hail Mary getting knocked down.
Congratulations to #BillsMafia. pic.twitter.com/W89izartkK
— Lawrence Owen (@Colts_Law) January 9, 2021
Rivers retired that offseason, sparking the process anew in Indianapolis for a team saddled with the 21st overall draft pick in 2021. Rather than trade up for Justin Fields or roll the dice with Davis Mills entirely too early, Ballard opted for another veteran reclamation project.
2021: Carson Wentz
Defensive DVOA rank: 8
Offensive DVOA rank: 13
Record: 9-8
Reich advocated for Wentz to join the roster, reaching back to the connection they shared in Philadelphia when the former No. 2 overall pick was building his case as an MVP candidate with Reich as his coordinator in 2017. But Wentz had suffered multiple serious injuries in the intervening years and had been deemed expendable by a franchise eager to kick the tires on Jalen Hurts at quarterback. Indy swooped in with first and third-round picks and suddenly the weight of a franchise was on the North Dakota State gunslinger’s shoulders once more.
This was not the solution Reich and Ballard hoped it would be. Indianapolis fielded the league’s second-most efficient rushing offense and its overall DVOA rating still backslid thanks to Wentz’s inability to capitalize on Jonathan Taylor’s breakthrough season. There are several examples of his struggles to move the ball downfield — including a career low 7.6 air yards per pass — but none are more egregious than his 185-yard, two turnover performance in a season-ending loss to the Jaguars that kept the Colts from the playoffs.
2022: Matt Ryan/Sam Ehlinger
Defensive DVOA rank: 10th
Offensive DVOA rank: 32nd
Record: 3-5-1
This is where the defense truly separates itself from the offense, prompting Irsay to separate his head coach from the franchise. The Colts dealt Wentz with prejudice — I’m not sure how else to describe it when a team trades away its starting QB without a succession plan in place — and added Matt Ryan at the cost of a third-round draft pick.
Ryan is only 37 years old but has aged like a normal NFL quarterback rather than Tom Brady. His arm strength has waned and his average pass distance of 5.8 yards is a career low and dead last among 35 qualified starting passers in 2022. With a struggling offensive line unable to clear space for Taylor or keep its QBs upright, the Colts have stagnated en route to the league’s least efficient offense.
Inserting 2021 sixth-round pick Sam Ehlinger into the lineup only served to speed up the doomsday clock counting down to Indianapolis’ eventual rebuild. He’s performed admirably in service of beefing up the team’s draft position, going 0-2 as a starter and contributing 43 net passing yards in Week 9’s 26-3 loss to the Patriots.
This was Ballard’s curse and Reich’s burden. The Colts were always too talented to bottom out, keeping them from finding the franchise quarterback to replace Luck. Reich was a good coach, but not good enough to turn flawed veteran passers into something more.
Firing him and bringing in Jeff Saturday — a beloved former player with no official coaching bonafides on his resume — as interim head coach is a white flag to the rest of 2022. Indianapolis isn’t here to win. It’s here to rebuild and break the cycle of mediocrity Reich couldn’t escape. It’s the right move, even if it’s at least a little unfair to a head coach who treaded water for years despite being weighed down by unimpressive veteran quarterbacks.
