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Carlie Irsay-Gordon has been deeply involved in the Indianapolis Colts’ operations, particularly since her father’s passing. In fact, she’s been seen on the sidelines each week wearing a headset, just like the coaches. That may leave some fans wondering what she’s been doing. Irsay-Gordon hasn’t been calling or suggesting plays or anything of that sort. Instead, she’s been analyzing how the coaches communicate with each other and how they call plays. For her, it’s been a learning experience, but also an opportunity to confirm that the people working for her know what they’re doing. Irsay-Gordon explained this in an interview during the early portion of the NFL season. “I need to learn more about this,” Irsay-Gordon told the media. “I need to be able to say, ‘Is this person full of BS? Do they even know what they’re talking about?’ And I think one of the things that being on the headset has really helped me learn is to the question earlier. It’s such a complex organism, a football team, and how it operates.” Indeed it is, Carlie. An NFL roster is made up of 53 players, not including practice squad players. Beyond that, most teams employ around 15 assistant coaches in addition to the head coach. All in all, it’s a lot of personalities to manage. While learning more about how coaches talk and call plays, Irsay-Gordon has learned that bad plays usually occur because of bad play calls. “On gameday, you can say, ‘Oh, that person ran that route wrong.’ When you learn to find out someone tagged the wrong wide receiver. It wasn’t really the player’s fault; it was the person that called it,” she outlined. It’s a great point that most NFL fans fail to consider. When a defensive player picks off the ball, the blame immediately shifts to the quarterback or the wide receiver. Rarely do coaches receive criticism during live broadcast analysis for their play-calling, which is a bit strange when you think about it. All in all, being on the headset has been a great learning tool for Irsay-Gordon, and she recommends that every team owner try it out. “It’s been very valuable, because it also lets us know where do we need to make tweaks? What resources do we need? What do we need to fix? So much of it comes down to just how we operate and how things work,” Irsay-Gordon continued. “The headsets, I would suggest it for anyone else that has to pay coaches and GMs millions and millions of dollars. It helps you make a less expensive mistake potentially.”
