After Josh McDaniels turned down the Colts’ head-coaching job he had verbally accepted to remain the Patriots’ offensive coordinator instead, one of the reasons given was that McDaniels’ family was happy in New England, and he didn’t want to uproot them.
Don’t believe it.
Peter King said this morning on PFT Live that the spin that McDaniels’ family was more comfortable in New England than with moving to Indianapolis wasn’t in any way related to McDaniels’ decision. Instead, it was all about him thinking he’d have a better career going forward if he remained with the Patriots than jumping to the Colts.
“This had nothing to do with his family,” King said. “It was about the Patriots giving him a better option than Indianapolis.”
King indicated that McDaniels might have felt more comfortable playing on Robert Kraft’s team than on Jim Irsay’s team, or that there was something else about the Colts that McDaniels didn’t like, but whatever it was, it was football-related, not location-related or family-related.
“He has to have thought there were some things wrong in Indianapolis,” King said. “What it is I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear it myself.”
The Colts seem genuinely happy to have “settled” for Frank Reich, and in the long run it may turn out that they got the right coach for the franchise despite getting turned down by their first choice. But it was still an embarrassing moment for the Colts to have McDaniels decide that being an assistant in New England is a better job than being a head coach in Indianapolis.