• The easiest place to start when doing an autopsy on the Frank Reich era in Indianapolis is the most important position on the field—and there’s no doubt that Reich and Colts GM Chris Ballard were screwed after the shocking exit quarterback Andrew Luck in the summer of 2019. It made sense, then, that the Colts had time to recalibrate at quarterback after that, especially given that they were a team built well beyond the point where they would fail in the top five picks. But you don’t get forever. There are two high-profile misses that marked Jim Irsay’s decision to fire Reich on Monday, both coming in the 2021 offseason after Luck had been gone for 18 months. (You can give them a pass for not moving up to get one in ’20, when they used the 12th pick to trade DeForest Buckner after Luck was just gone.) Reich is leaving Indianapolis halfway through his fifth season. Jenna Watson/IndyStar/USA TODAY Network The first miss was to Matthew Stafford. When working with the Lions on his trade request, Stafford’s camp gave Detroit’s new management three teams it would prefer in a trade – the Rams, 49ers and Colts. That’s why the very good offers from Washington (the 19th pick and a third pick) and Carolina (the eighth pick, a fifth pick and Teddy Bridgewater) were quickly dismissed. Ultimately, the Colts never put their first-round pick, the 21st pick, on the table, and the Niners never made a hard offer, which allowed the Rams to close quickly. The Colts have completed Carson Wentz. The Niners are done with Trey Lance. The Rams finished with a Lombardi Trophy. And when Indy pursued Wentz, they opted to trade a 2021 third-rounder and a 2022 first-rounder instead of Ohio State’s Justin Fields (who was very important to Ballard and Reich early in the process) . The Colts wound up using the 21st pick to take Michigan pass rusher Kwity Paye, while the Bears used the 20th pick to move up and get Fields. We will see how the story ends by looking at all this. But if there’s any regret for Reich, I imagine it’s because of how he and the Colts picked up halfbacks in three straight offseasons after Luck, instead of finding a guy (either in the 2020 or ’21 draft, or with a vet like Stafford) to continue. • There’s no question that decision-making was a big part of how Irsay came to his decision here. His impatience carried over into January and February as the call to cut ties with Wentz was pushed forward, and it was felt in that building since the team’s ugly loss to a very bad Jaguars team in Week 18 last year. And there’s a strong sense that Irsay’s fingerprints were all over the team’s decision to pull the plug on Matt Ryan (and go to Sam Ehlinger) a few weeks ago, with the owner’s growing desire to settle the position once and for all. always well established. . Elevating Ehlinger, he said, would lead to one of two conclusions: Either they’d actually have something, or he’d fall flat on his face and help the team place the draft in April. OC Marcus Brady was fired after that move, stunning the coaching staff and angering some who believed Reich should have done more to back up the venerable Brady. Which, of course, only added to the tension within a staff that had already been rebuilt twice in the last two years, following the departures of coordinators Nick Sirianni and Matt Eberflus. Now, Reich is out, Jeff Saturday is in, and the future of the organization is in flux. Irsay’s been said to have been enamored of Saturday’s potential for some time, and the former Colts center was in attendance at training camp over the summer. How the rest of the veteran staff responds to him will be interesting, given that all of their careers are now in flux as well, and they will be responding to someone who has only coached at the high school level. But Saturday he’ll now have a chance to prove he can do like Deion Sanders at Jackson State and deal with the logistical challenges presented to someone with no experience. Meanwhile, it’s pretty clear how hands-on Irsay will be in shaping where the Colts go from here (perhaps a call to Peyton Manning), based on how he’s been running the team since late last year year. For better or worse, this will be his show. • One last thing about the Colts: The deterioration of the offensive line has played no small part in what’s happened in recent weeks, so the numbers I’m about to present (via Spotrac) should grab your attention. Here are the teams with the highest cap-dollar allocations to their offensive lines for 2022…

  1. Colts: $41.54 million (19.5% of adjusted cap).
  2. Eagles: $37.30 million (16.6%).
  3. Ravens: $34.88 million (17.0%).
  4. Cardinals: $34.87 million (16.8%).
  5. Lions: $34.14 million (15.7%). To get there, Indy dealt center Ryan Kelly, guard Quenton Nelson and dealt monster deals to Brayden Smith — all worth it. But the other spots, one of which was left tackle, were left to rot from the inside out. And in many ways the situation at left tackle mirrors what happened at quarterback, with several failed halves taken after the departure of Anthony Constonzo leaving a mess at a premium position. Bottom line, with how Ryan and Ehlinger have been hit, or how the Colts’ running game—once one of the NFL’s best—has fallen apart, you’d think Indy was completely neglecting its offensive line. What actually happened could be worse. • Since there are now two open jobs, I thought I’d attack something that will be a big topic come recruiting season: the backlog of quality defensive candidates out there in an environment that has turned its time toward recruiting offense . On that list, for me, would be Jonathan Gannon of the Eagles, Ejiro Evero of the Broncos, Pat Graham of the Raiders, Raheem Morris of the Rams, Vance Joseph of the Cardinals, Jerod Mayo of the Patriots, Leslie Frazier of the Bills, Lou Anarumo of the Bengals and Giant Wink Martindale. Recent history tells us that you can’t count on more than two of them being hired. But does it have to be that way? I dove into it that Monday afternoon. Fourteen league teams have winning records going into Week 9 Sunday. Seven of the 14 have coaches with defensive backgrounds. Sixteen teams (excluding the Panthers, since it’s hard to include Matt Rhule or Steve Wilks in that) have a losing record. Six of the 16 have defensive backgrounds, and Mike Tomlin, who did not have a losing record in his 16 years as the Steelers’ head coach, is one of them. Like it or not, the facts don’t really support the idea that hiring a coach on one side of the ball is clearly right and hiring a coach on the other side of the ball is clearly wrong. However, first-time recruits coming from the defensive end over the past two years, such as Robert Saleh, Brandon Staley and Matt Eberflus, have almost uniformly shown plenty of promise. This is exactly what I thought you—and maybe the Colts and Panthers—should testify. • I spoke with Concussion Legacy Foundation CEO and co-founder Chris Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and WWE superstar, at the organization’s gala, and we covered some of that conversation in Week 9 Takeaways. As promised, here are the thoughts of more current events, specifically how the NFL and the Dolphins handled the Tua Tagovailoa situation in October. Nowinski listed a number of things that bothered him about it. But number one on the list might have been the simplest thing of all: that what we all watched that Sunday, where Tagovailoa tripped to the ground, wasn’t immediately classified as a symptom in the same way that a player couldn’t get through his ABC’s back in the training room would be. “It’s human error and it comes from a culture of trying to rush guys back on the field because losing a game — in one’s mind — is more important than the risk to one’s career, in part because that risk to one’s career is just by the player,” Nowinski said. “Every NFL player, we know, has a concussion. Joe Barrow said this a few days after Tua’s condition. We all know they are hiding them, so when they show objective signs, we have to respect them because these are things they couldn’t cover up even though we know they wanted to. “They want to give themselves the choice of whether they could come back or not. So these signs, the shaking of the head, the falling, no one should ever enter again. Head shaking, for some reason, is not on the no-go list. But anyone who’s done the head shake knows you only do it when you’re concussed.” Now, the NFL has revised the protocol to allow these signs on the field to be classified as symptoms. But the truth here is that only time will tell what kind of difference it makes – because what the league has done in this area over the years is enough to earn the benefit of the doubt from almost anyone. • One of the nice things about Cade Otton’s last two-minute surge on Sunday was the moment it gave his family after two very difficult months. Otto lost his mother, Sally, in September to Parkinson’s disease, and — as you can imagine — his thoughts were with her as he crossed the line to win the game for the Buccaneers. “Yeah, I started thinking about my mom right away,” Otto told me after the game. “I know she would be so proud. I’m just grateful to have her as a mom and I miss her, obviously. I just have happy thoughts about her. It’s wonderful to think of her. It’s sad knowing she’s no longer with us, but I know she’s proud.” • I’ve been wondering for the past few weeks, as the Tua Tagovailoa–Tyreek Hill union began to add up to a breakout year for Tagovailoa…