“Very HOLLOW”: Ryan Clark beefs with Kyle Brandt over the latter’s critical take on Jeff Saturday
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Kyle Brandt wanted to see if Jeff Saturday's colleagues at ESPN would be critical of his hire.
The recent hiring of Jeff Saturday as the interim Head Coach of the Indianapolis Colts has attracted a lot of criticism from the media circles. The new HC was a respected analyst at ESPN before he made this career switch and following the news becoming public, his peers at the network wished him well and did not show any hate toward him.
Kyle Brandt, the co-host of NFL Network’s Good Morning Football did not hold back on the Colts hiring of Jeff Saturday and raised a question for the new coach. He asked Saturday of he was “embarrassed, or at best, uncomfortable to take the job” considering he has never coached at the collegiate level let alone at a professional level.
Here’s what Kyle had to say, “What do you say here? Because he was a high school coach and he was on ESPN and screaming on ‘Get Up?’ It is an interesting media thing too, because this is an ESPN employee and I’d be fascinated to hear if anybody in ESPN have something critical to say about Jeff Saturday in this case or is it, ‘Ah, we’re happy for Jeff.”
Former Steelers defensive back and current ESPN analyst Ryan Clark was not smiling at this comment of Brandt. He shot back at the analyst and told him to “stick to talking about the people that cover football at your network. We are good over here. Be well.” Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk responded to Clark’s tweet as well.
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Does Jeff Saturday deserve to be criticized for taking up a job offer that is clearly an upgrade from his current role?
Florio had this to say, “It’s fair game for Kyle to point out that Saturday isn’t qualified for the job, but it rings very hollow for direct employees of the NFL who relentlessly and gratuitously hype the product to question ESPN analysts for not criticizing the hire.”
Ryan Clark had expressed his honest thoughts on the hiring of Jeff Saturday earlier via a tweet. I believe in Jeff Satuday’s intelligence and character, not his hiring. There are so many layers to this. Is it about Privilege, race, nepotism, relationship, or respect? In the end the comfort and familiarity of friendship overwhelmed Irsay and could overwhelm the locker room.”
Jeff Saturday cannot be the one to blame for taking up a job offer. Why would any person in their right mind decline a better job offer irrespective of their qualifications? The most important point is, we do not know how the Colts will fare under Saturday, he may shock us and improve the team, he deserves an opportunity to prove himself.
There is no denying that this job could have gone to better coaches with more experience. There are so many Black coaches in assistant roles that are ready to be in the shoes of a Head Coach, however, Jim Irsay does what he wants to do. He has known Saturday for years and the two have developed a bond which played a big part in Irsay deciding to hand this job over to Jeff.
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Sumedh Joshi
(2317 Articles Published)