'It's the very expensive question': Carlie Irsay-Gordon on QBs and more about the Colts

Indianapolis Star

15 hours ago

INDIANAPOLIS — Carlie Irsay-Gordon has followed in her father's footsteps this offseason, taking over as the team's primary owner in the wake of Jim Irsay's death in May.
Irsay-Gordon has already acknowledged that she may be a little more reserved publicly than her father, but she continued one of her father's traditions on Saturday, sitting down in the broadcast booth for the third quarter of Saturday's preseason game against the Packers.
Unlike her father, Irsay-Gordon didn't make any bold predictions for the season, but she did touch on a handful of key Colts issues.
Irsay-Gordon avoided picking a side in the most important position battle of training camp.
Indianapolis either has established starters or a clear front-runner at almost every position on both sides of the ball, but the Colts still do not have a winner in the battle between incumbent Anthony Richardson and veteran import Daniel Jones.
'It's the very expensive question that everyone's wondering about,' Irsay-Gordon said. 'There's nothing that makes the good things rise to the surface better than competition, and having Daniel in there with Anthony, he obviously has more experience than Anthony. … They've each done well. They've also made mistakes.'
Irsay-Gordon was asked directly what she thought of the two quarterbacks.
But she left it up to the man who is ultimately responsible for the decision.
'Shane is going to have a tough decision to make,' Irsay-Gordon said. 'But I feel confident he's going to make the right decision.'
Irsay-Gordon took over a Colts team with uncertainty at the top.
Her father elected to keep Ballard and Steichen in their roles last offseason while acknowledging that the team's performance hasn't been good enough, placing implied pressure on the pairing to improve.
Irsay-Gordon echoed that position in her introductory press conference, but she steered away from any ultimatums on their job security in Saturday's interview.
'We are so grateful to Chris and Shane, because if you're a head coach and you don't get along with your general manager, it's a total nightmare,' Irsay-Gordon said. 'The great thing about Chris and Shane is they don't always agree, but they discuss it, and I think they make better decisions because of it.'
Irsay-Gordon could be seen as the tiebreaker in the event that Ballard and Steichen cannot come to an agreement.
But she gently disputed that characterization, suggesting instead that it's her job to provide clarity for the framework of the problem in those cases.
'It's more like a question,' Irsay-Gordon said.
Irsay-Gordon has spent years working with the coaching staff. One of the principles she's learned is a tenet that can be difficult for fans to grasp, that a team should focus more on its process than its results.
A difficult pill for fans to swallow after four years without a playoff berth.
'Winning is just an outcome,' Irsay-Gordon said. 'You can have a not-great team and win some games; you can lose some games and be an amazing, Super Bowl team.'
Improvement can come from a lot of different places. Irsay-Gordon outlined the team's decision to hire a new defensive coordinator as the product of trying to identify what went wrong in the team's 7-10 fiish a year ago.
'I love Gus (Bradley), but it was time to move on from Gus,' Irsay-Gordon said.
Personnel moves makes headlines.
Irsay-Gordon suggested she also supported Steichen's idea to change the tenor of training camp, injecting more scrimmages and situational work into the workouts. Irsay-Gordon believes the result has been one of the better camps the Colts have had.
'Part of the process is looking at the process we had,' Irsay-Gordon said.
Irsay-Gordon has remained present on the sidelines so far in the preseason, a place she's occupied for a long time as she tries to learn the details of the position.
'(Coaches), they're in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars of our human capital, that our family's investing in,' Irsay-Gordon said. 'Probably when we hired Chuck (Pagano) was when I first realized, being a part of that interview process, what goes into a coach's role. But honestly, behind the closed doors … it's been invaluable to sit in there.'
Irsay-Gordon has always been careful to avoid making her presence intrusive.
When she first came up with the idea, former Colts head coach Frank Reich supported it, and her father gave her one key piece of advice
'The one thing you have to do is you have to be here all the time,' Irsay-Gordon remembers her father saying. 'Because if you show up a week after we lose, and then you're not there after we win… You have to be there and be all-in.'
Irsay-Gordon and her younger sister, Kalen Jackson, maintain a consistent presence in the building, unlike some NFL owners who prefer to be almost entirely hands off.
'We want to help,' Irsay-Gordon said. 'We want to be a resource to help everyone be successful."