INDIANAPOLIS -- There are many in the football industry that believe Jeff Saturday isn't qualified to be a the interim head coach of the Colts, and the only reason he got the job is because of his ties with his former team and owner Jim Irsay.
After the Steelers' 24-17 victory over the Colts on Monday night, there will be more evidence for the naysayers.
Staring at a seven-point deficit, Saturday's Colts had 93 yards to go in 3 minutes and 52 seconds with three timeouts. It's the perfect scenario drawn up for a four-minute offense. Strike a balance between moving the ball downfield while taking as much time off the clock as possible.
The Colts got off to a great start moving the ball down the field when two completions by Matt Ryan and a run by Jonathan Taylor gained 49 yards. Indianapolis even overcame a fourth-down conversion on the other side of the two-minute warning, still with all three timeouts in hand.
Then came the question marks. When Michael Pittman Jr. caught the 3-yard pass to convert the fourth down, Saturday didn't call a timeout. When Alex Highsmith sacked Ryan on the very next play, Saturday didn't call a timeout. When Ryan scrambled and gained 14 yards on second and 17, Saturday let 25 more seconds tick off the clock without calling a timeout.
It wasn't until Taylor was stuffed on third and 3 that Saturday finally used the first of his three timeouts, leaving the Colts 30 seconds to travel 26 yards with two timeouts, but needing to convert another fourth and 3.
"You know, I thought we had plenty of time. I wasn't really concerned," Saturday explained after the game. "We still had timeouts. I wasn't too concerned. When he was going down, I couldn't tell where they were going to start him from going down, like if he was going to get the first down, and then we got there. I expected us to get on the ball and have another play a little bit quicker than that. But again, this wasn't a press for time. We just didn't make enough plays."
When pressed again if he thought of calling a timeout after the 14-yard scramble by Ryan, Saturday doubled down on his decision.
"Yeah, I didn't feel like time was of the essence at the moment," Saturday said. "I thought we had a good play. ... We obviously don't do great on the backside, so it's worse. But I felt good about the call before. Felt like we had time; we would have had timeouts afterwards. We were in striking distance. So yeah, I never felt like the pressure of needing the timeout. Like I said, I thought the call was good, and again, we were in that mode pretty much the whole second half, so it was pretty consistent with what we were doing, so again, it wasn't like a change for us. We just didn't execute it."
When it comes to sounding like an NFL head coach, boiling everything down to execution, or lack thereof, fits the bill.
The Colts were unable to convert the second fourth-and-3 play, and turned the ball over on downs with 24 seconds left on the clock and two timeouts that would never be used.
Saturday is now 1-2 since taking over as interim head coach after Frank Reich was fired.