INDIANAPOLIS — Most places, it would be considered odd for an NFL owner to sit in on their club’s special team meetings. But here, that kind of thing passes for a typical Wednesday.
New Indianapolis Colts principal owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon has been a fixture around the team her entire life, born into football as the oldest child of Jim Irsay, the longtime Colts owner who died last month. But in recent years, in particular, her presence has been much more conspicuous.
“She’s all around this place,” receivers coach Reggie Wayne said. “She’s been doing that for years.”
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You can find Irsay-Gordon just about anywhere — in meetings with coaches and players, in the personnel department and even on the sideline during games, listening in to the transmissions on the coaches’ headsets and following along with a playcall sheet.
“She’s been in a majority of my meetings since I’ve been here,” third-year special teams coordinator Brian Mason said. “So, she’s very hands-on. I think the thing that she’s able to provide some insight in is not kicking or necessarily scheme-based. However, 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.
“And, then, she’s back there [in the meeting room]. If something doesn’t make sense, she’s going to ask a question.”
In those instances, Mason said, it’s not a case of Irsay-Gordon meddling in affairs. Instead, he said, it’s a reminder that he might need to be more clear or concise.
“You’re like, ‘Oh, wow, if that didn’t make sense [to her], maybe there’s other people that that didn’t reach as well,'” Mason said.
Irsay-Gordon’s role, along with those of her sisters, Kalen Jackson and Casey Foyt, has been this way for years. But it has received renewed attention in recent weeks since Jim Irsay’s passing. That initiated the long-planned transition of ownership to his daughters. Given the change, there were questions as to whether Irsay-Gordon, 44, might alter her approach to the job. But there’s no indication that’s going to happen, nor has anyone in the organization suggested it should.
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“You’ve got to know what’s going on as an owner,” coach Shane Steichen said. “For her to be on the sidelines, I think it’s a great deal so she knows exactly what’s going on.”
Irsay-Gordon strongly believes that the best way to fully understand what is and isn’t happening under her leadership is to immerse herself in every possible way. She’s described by people who know her as detail oriented, and having a front-row seat is among the best ways to learn those details.
“I need to be able to say, ‘Is this person full of B.S.? Do they even know what they’re talking about?'” she said. “It is such a complex organism, a football team and how it operates on game day.”
Irsay-Gordon, for example, posited a scenario where there is a miscommunication in the passing game and it is presumed a receiver ran an incorrect route. But, she said, there are times she has come to realize that the play was called incorrectly by, say, the quarterback.
“That’s been very valuable,” she said. “It helps us be able to know, where do we need to make tweaks? What resources do we need? What do we need to fix? … I would suggest it for anyone else that has to pay coaches and GMs million and millions of dollars. It helps you make a less expensive mistake potentially.”
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Irsay-Gordon and her sisters have been exposed to numerous areas of the franchise during their lives, at their father’s insistence. But Irsay-Gordon has gravitated in recent years toward management and administrative roles. She spearheaded many significant personnel changes on the business side of the franchise as her authority and impact grew. But she has become increasingly comfortable making an impact on the football side, too.
Her daily interactions with coaches and players, in theory, better prepare her to evaluate big moves like major free agent acquisitions and coaching hires. That’s more important than ever seeing how those major decisions now fall to the Irsay sisters.
In Irsay-Gordon’s mind, one can never have too much information.
“I just kind of respected that she was going the extra mile to both understand everything that was happening from a schematic standpoint and trying to get the best out of the players, the coaches, and being actively involved,” Mason said. “Obviously, it’s not a situation where she’s actively speaking on the headset or she’s stepping on anybody’s toes. 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.”
