Josh McDaniels Explains Decision To Back Out Of Deal With Colts & Remain With Patriots

Patriots OC Josh McDaniels finally broke his silence about his decision to back out of an agreement with the Colts to become their head coach and instead return to New England in an interview with Jim McBride of the Boston Globe.

According to McDaniels, everything changed for him after he met with Patriots owner Robert Kraft and HC Bill Belichick to clarify what his role would be moving forward.

“I wasn’t 100 percent sure what the future was. I just hadn’t had any clarity on that,’’ McDaniels said. “So, where did I fit in? Where there any plans? I just didn’t have much clarity on what my role was here moving forward.

“The opportunity to stay here and work for who I think is the greatest owner in sports and the best head football coach in the history of our game, to work with the best quarterback that has ever played . . . Look, I’m privileged to have the opportunity to do that and when they kind of crystallized that — ‘Hey, here’s what we see going forward and here’s how we would like you to fit into it’ — it gave me a reason to stop and say, ‘all right, what’s the best decision for me?’ And certainly it was difficult. But I made the decision on my own, nobody pushed me into it.’’

McDaniels says the conversation with Colts GM Chris Ballard in which he informed him he was going to remain in New England was “as difficult a decision as I’ve ever made professionally.”

“Chris was tremendous the whole entire time,’’ said McDaniels. “He’s an incredible human being. He’s great at what he does. He’s going to be successful. It was difficult. I had a friendship with him — I still do . . . He’s a guy that I have a lot of respect for and admiration for. He was a big reason why I was interested in that job in the first place. It was as difficult a decision as I’ve ever made professionally. He handled it extremely well, he was a complete professional about it.’’

McDaniels offered an apology to anyone impacted by his decision and praised the Colts for being a “tremendous organization.”

“And I apologize to anyone who was affected in any way. Indianapolis did a tremendous job,” McDaniels said. “They have a tremendous organization and I was lucky to be considered and I just think once I found out [what my future in New England was], I made the right decision for me and my family at this time.’’

The NFL is considering changing the rules to allow teams to officially hire coaches during the playoffs in an attempt to make the process easier on both teams and coaching candidates in the coming years.

While things may not have worked out as the Colts were hoping back in January, they managed to come away with a promising head coach in Frank Reich and elected to retain the members of McDaniels’ coaching staff that had already been hired prior to McDaniels reneging on their agreement.

It will be interesting to see if/when McDaniels’ name resurfaces in connection to head-coaching jobs.