Source: Icon Sportswire / Getty
**INDIANAPOLIS** **–** The look is unusual.
You take a gaze across NFL sidelines and you aren’t finding owners pacing the sideline on a Sunday, let alone with a headset on.
But that’s how Carlie-Irsay Godon has chosen to operate on game days, forgoing the usual setting in a suite for the top of the franchise.
When Irsay-Godon met the media earlier this month in the first public appearance following the new transition of ownership, the eldest Irsay daughter had a feeling such a question was coming.
“Even as back as when we hired Chuck Pagano, that sort of accelerated my, ‘I need to learn more about this. I need to be able to say, is this person full of BS? Do they even know what they’re talking about?’” Irsay-Gordon explains. “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 of football team and how it operates and on game day, and you could say, ‘Oh, that person ran that route wrong.’ When you learn to find, ‘Oh, someone tagged the wrong wide receiver, and it wasn’t really the player’s fault – it was the person that called it.’ I think that’s been very valuable, because it also helps us be able to 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 and 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.”
Shane Steichen has coached the Colts for 2 seasons and he doesn’t need to look far on game day to find someone who will be a huge decision maker in deciding his future.
What was Steichen’s first thought when the head coach/offensive play caller realized Irsay-Gordon would be listening to the raw emotions of an NFL headset on game day?
“My first thought?” Steichen repeats of the question. “You know what? I thought it was great. I’m not going to lie. I mean, she said it, it’s real. Like you got to know what’s going on as an owner, and for her to be on the sidelines, I think it’s a great deal so she knows exactly what’s going on on game day for sure.”
To be clear, Irsay-Gordon is not chiming in on the headset.
Nope, she’s there with pen and paper taking notes and observing.
Special teams coordinator Brian Mason is also on the sidelines on game days, but that’s not been his only exposure to Irsay-Gordon’s presence.
“It’s unique that she’s been in a majority of my meetings since I’ve been here, Mason shares. “So, she’s very hands-on. She has a really good understanding of the team, the players, kind of trying to make sure we can get the best out of those players, ways that we can kind of try to help guys in certain ways, and then like she’s back there, if something doesn’t make sense, she’s going to ask a question. So obviously, you’re like, ‘Oh, wow. If that didn’t make sense, maybe there’s other people that that didn’t reach as well.’”
As optically odd as it might look for Irsay-Gordon to be rocking a headset, the premise from her is quiet clear with her intentions.
She’s trying to be exposed to as many learning situations as possible.
“Really to me, I just respected it,” Mason says of seeing Irsay-Gordon on the sidelines. “Like it’s a ton of respect that she has spent years being heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the football organization. She’s really detailed and spent a lot of time to kind of know the ins and outs of everything that’s happening, and wants to make sure that we get the absolute best that we can as an organization, that we’re putting players in positions to be successful and can kind of reach the standard that we have set as an organization. So, I just kind of respected that she was going the extra mile to both understand everything that was happening from a schematic standpoint, understanding and trying to get the best out of the players, the coaches, and being actively involved.
“Obviously, it’s not a situation where she’s actively speaking on the headset or she’s stepping on anybody’s toes, or there’s not any situations where decisions are going through ownership in that kind of realm or situation. So, it’s not like a situation where anybody’s being micromanaged. It’s just a situation where she’s fully involved in the success of the organization.”
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