What Shane Steichen brings as Colts head coach and the main challenges he faces (2024)

If this feels familiar, it should. For the second time in five years, the Colts are tapping the Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator as their next head coach.

But in a lot of ways, this is a different hire, an ambitious move for a flailing franchise hoping to revive its present and reshape its future.

Following an exhaustive, winding process that spanned 35 days, included 13 candidates and 21 interviews — that’s roughly 132 hours of sit-downs, both virtually and in-person — owner Jim Irsay and general manager Chris Ballard finally have their man. They’ve hired Shane Steichen to lead the Colts into a new era.

The deal was finalized Monday night and Steichen signed the contract Tuesday morning at the team’s 56th Street facility, making him the 11th head coach in the Colts’ Indianapolis era. He beat out fellow finalists Raheem Morris, Rich Bisaccia, Wink Martindale, Brian Callahan, Ejiro Evero, Aaron Glenn and Jeff Saturday for the job.

It makes sense on several levels. Steichen’s stock as a head-coaching candidate rose dramatically this season as he helped mold Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts into an MVP candidate and one of the most dynamic players in football.

Steichen, who took over play-calling duties from Philadelphia head coach Nick Sirianni in November 2021, oversaw an offense that finished second in the league in points per game (27.2), third in total offense (389.1 ypg), fifth in rushing, ninth in passing, fourth in third-down percentage and third in red zone efficiency. No team has more rushing yards (5,224) than the Eagles over the last two seasons.

In three playoff games, including Sunday’s 38-35 loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, Philly piled up 104 points and 1,103 yards. It was Steichen dialing up the plays and, along with Sirianni, constructing the game plan each week.

The Colts finished at or near the bottom in every significant offensive metric in 2022, scoring just 15.7 points per game as a unit and finding the end zone on only 12.8 percent of their drives — both dead last in the league. The need for a new offensive vision was obvious. In Steichen, 37, the Colts land a young, creative mind they hope will groom their quarterback of the future — a coach who’s proved he can do so with QBs of varying skill sets at different stages of their careers.

“Theyhad to go offense,” a league insider familiar with the Colts’ search said.

On top of tailoring the Eagles’ offensive scheme to Hurts’ blossoming talent, and lifting the third-year QB to MVP runner-up behind Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, Steichen guided a 22-year-old Justin Herbert to a 4,336-yard, 31-touchdown season as a rookie in 2020 and a 37-year-old Philip Rivers to one of his finest seasons with the Chargers in 2018. Steichen has routinely excelled at marrying the scheme to what his quarterback does best, not the other way around.

And that’s what lured the Colts. Can Steichen replicate that type of magic with, say, Bryce Young? Or C.J. Stroud? Or Will Levis? Or Anthony Richardson?

The Colts are banking on it.

We got our guy. pic.twitter.com/xZJXgfavFY

— Indianapolis Colts (@Colts) February 14, 2023

Because that was always central to this decision. Irsay and Ballard had to decide what kind of coach they wanted in place to cultivate their new face of the franchise. Nothing for this team is more paramount.

Here are a few more layers to the decision and what comes next for Steichen and the Colts:

• It’s the third time in succession that the Colts and Eagles have hired each other’s offensive coordinator as head coach.

In February 2018, after Josh McDaniels backed out at the last minute, the Colts turned to Frank Reich, who was fresh off helping the Eagles win Super Bowl LII.

Three years later, the Eagles hired Sirianni, the Colts’ OC under Reich for three seasons.

And now, two years later, the Colts have once again tapped back into the Eagles’ coaching staff, hiring Steichen away from Philly following a Super Bowl appearance. Like Reich, Steichen’s two most recent coaching stops before landing the head job in Indianapolis were Eagles OC and Chargers OC.

• Steichen is a former UNLV quarterback who’s only been coaching in the NFL for 12 seasons. At 37, he’s the second-youngest head coach hired in franchise history — Don Shula was just 33 when he landed the top job in Baltimore in 1963. Steichen also becomes the third-youngest head coach in the NFL, behind the Rams’ Sean McVay and the Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell, who are both 37 but a few months younger.

For comparison’s sake, Reich was 57 when the Colts hired him in 2018 and Chuck Pagano was 52 when he landed in Indianapolis in 2012. (McDaniels was 41 when he accepted the Colts’ job, then backed out.)

Steichen’s biggest coaching influence? Norv Turner, who helped Steichen break into the NFL in 2011.

• As for the staff Steichen will have to put together, there’s a good chance he keeps Colts defensive coordinator Gus Bradley in the same role for 2023, as well as several of his assistants. The two overlapped in Los Angeles for four seasons; Steichen was the Chargers’ QB coach and later offensive coordinator, while Bradley ran the defense. A certain level of continuity would seem welcomed by a Colts organization amid so much turnover. Secondary coach Ron Milus and linebackers coach Richard Smith, among others, did a commendable job under difficult circ*mstances in 2022.

The Colts blocked other teams from interviewing Bradley for their defensive coordinator post in recent weeks. Indy brass was always open to him returning, and as many as four head-coaching candidates expressed a desire to retain Bradley and his staff during interviews.

On the offensive side, Steichen would likely look to build an entirely new staff. One holdover could be Colts great Reggie Wayne, who is under contract for another season as wide receivers coach and seemed open to returning back in January. (The receivers want him back, as well.) Chris Strausser, the Colts’ offensive line coach the past four seasons, is interviewing in Houston and is unlikely to return.

Two hires that will be essential early in Steichen’s tenure: offensive coordinator and who he brings in to fix the Colts’ beleaguered offensive line. Hiring an experienced coordinator makes sense for a young, first-time head coach — possibly one who arrives with his own head-coaching experience. As for the line, a unit that allowed 60 sacks in 2022, a new voice is sorely needed. With a young quarterback coming in who’ll need time to grow into the position at the NFL level, it’s crucial the Colts get that hire right.

• The move to go with an up-and-coming offensive mind tracks with the leaguewide trend over the past several years, and the reason teams keep going down this road is because it usually works. Three of the six teams to hire head coaches with offensive backgrounds in 2022 — the Jaguars, Vikings and Giants — saw their win totals jump by five or more, and four (adding in the Dolphins) made the playoffs after not making it the year prior.

Simply put, offense wins in today’s NFL. The Colts know this, and they know how much that unit held them back in 2022. In each of the past two years, nine of the top-10 scoring offenses have made the playoffs, and every one of the coaches to lead their team to the conference championship was hired with an offensive background (Philadelphia’s Sirianni, San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan, Kansas City’s Andy Reid, Cincinnati’s Zac Taylor and Los Angeles’ McVay).

That overwhelmingly obvious trend, coupled with the Colts planning to draft a rookie quarterback and revamp their offensive scheme, likely made Steichen more attractive than candidates with defensive backgrounds, among them Morris, Glenn, Evero and Martindale. The Colts also interviewed Callahan, Bisaccia and Saturday twice.

Saturday, who ardently wanted the permanent job, wasn’t seen as a finalist as far back as a few weeks ago, despite what some reports indicated.

• It was obvious, late in Reich’s tenure, that Irsay became frustrated at what he often deemed a “lack of accountability” within the organization. Some players privately wondered if the Colts’ former coach called out his top players enough, especially as several struggled throughout the 2022 season. So did the owner. In a lot of ways, Irsay wanted more fire from the man in charge, and that’s partly why Saturday was lured from a TV studio in November and onto the Colts’ sideline.

Steichen’s personality seems more of this vein.

Shane Steichen is going to be a damn good head coach one day pic.twitter.com/I87Fk4nxfK

— Brenden Deeg (@BrendenDeeg_) October 4, 2022

• Lastly, and this is important: Steichen landing the job means Irsay allowed Ballard to not only run the search but to make the hire. The owner has said for years that’s how it’s supposed to work, but his recent actions — namely the stunning move to hire Saturday nine games into the season against Ballard’s wishes — spoke of increasing impatience and a fading trust in those around him. This indicates Irsay is once again allowing his GM to do his job, which is the only chance the Colts have to get all of this right.

(Top photo: Andy Lewis / Getty Images)

Zak Keefer is a national features writer for The Athletic, focusing on the NFL. He previously covered the Indianapolis Colts for nine seasons, winning the Pro Football Writers of America's 2020 Bob Oates Award for beat writing. He wrote and narrated the six-part podcast series "Luck," and is an adjunct professor of journalism at Indiana University. Follow Zak on Twitter @zkeefer