Indianapolis Colts linebacker Shaquille Leonard is a Jeff Saturday believer.
During an appearance with The Pat McAfee Show on Friday, the star LB gave his endorsement for Saturday as the Colts’ next head coach.
Saturday served as interim head coach during the second half of the 2022 season and is a top candidate to land the full-time job.
Leonard said Saturday is a “great coach” and it makes him “so mad” when people say he did a bad job leading the team this past season.
“You need to cut that out. I can’t stand that,” Leonard said. “Man, listen, Jeff came in with the right mindset — that he wasn’t going to sit back and allow just bad play. He demanded excellence from everybody. That offensive line — I mean, of course, everybody’s going to criticize that offensive line, you see they got better, didn’t they? He came in and made sure that everybody knew exactly what was at stake and what he wanted from each and every player.
“We’d go play the game and we’d blow a lead or something, that next meeting was what would’ve been needed. I’m going to call you out. I’m going to put you on the big screen and let you know that this is unacceptable.”
Saturday was heavily criticized for his performance as the Colts’ interim head coach. Coming in with zero coaching experience at the college or pro level, Saturday led the team to victory in his career debut, but then dropped each of the last seven games to close out the season.
A lot of Colts fans would be unhappy if Saturday got the full-time job, but it appears he has Leonard fully in his corner.
