{"id":873615,"date":"2026-10-07T06:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/873615\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T06:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:08:08","slug":"carlie-irsay-gordon-a-good-leader-is-about-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/873615\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlie Irsay-Gordon: “A good leader is about listening”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon has had an active, visible presence on the team\u2019s sidelines for a while. It predates her tenure as the controlling owner of the franchise.<\/p>\n

She has explained her approach in the past. It wasn\u2019t an issue when the Colts were 7-0 in 2025.<\/p>\n

This year, with a pair of standalone games in the first four weeks and multiple images of Irsay-Gordon working alongside the coaches and the staff, it has become a thing again \u2014 mainly because she has been criticized for it.<\/p>\n

Irsay-Gordon addressed the situation in comments to Bridget Condon of Front Office Sports Tonight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to say on a good day I have like a fifth-grade reading level understanding of the game and just the basic concepts of what we\u2019re trying to do, depending on the week and depending on our opponent and depending on the situation,\u201d Irsay-Gordon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think, then, it just helps to understand and to ask questions because I think one of the things, in my opinion, like being a good leader is about listening<\/a>, really to understand. And I think that\u2019s what the best teams do.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June 2025, she talked about her approach during games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to be able to say, \u2018Is this person full of BS? Do they even know what they\u2019re talking about?\u2019\u201d Irsay-Gordon said at the time. \u201cIt is such a complex organism, a football team and how it operates. . . . You could say, \u2018Oh, that person ran that route wrong.\u2019 Then you learn, \u2018Oh, someone tagged the wrong WR and it wasn\u2019t really the player\u2019s fault, it was the person that called it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve personally got no problem with it. Other owners should do it<\/a>. Inevitably, they\u2019ll be making big decisions about the future of the franchise. They can either make them based on information obtained from others, or they can be actively involved in gathering the requisite information in real time.<\/p>\n

That said, there are potential issues. The coach can feel undermined. His decisions could be hampered by having the ultimate boss lurking. As one coach put it, there are ways to do what she\u2019s doing that aren\u2019t so obvious \u2014 to the viewers or to the coaches. In a word, Irsay-Gordon\u2019s current approach can be \u201cmessy.\u201d<\/p>\n

As another coach put it, there\u2019s a potential performative element to the exercise, whether it\u2019s intended or not. She now knows that the cameras will find her, and the notepad and the pen have already become fodder for all sorts of memes.<\/p>\n

One important question that should be asked at some point is whether she\u2019s doing what some other owners do \u2014 wasting the coach\u2019s valuable time the day after a game with a long meeting to rehash everything that happened.<\/p>\n

Still, she\u2019s the owner. Many things fall within the prerogative of the owners. Jerry Jones made himself the General Manager of the Cowboys when he bought the team in 1989, despite having no obvious skills or experience to perform such an important and specialized job. And while that happened in the days before the Internet and social media, there was no loud objection to Jerry giving himself a job for which he wasn\u2019t fit.<\/p>\n

Likewise, plenty of owners end up on the sidelines of a game. It\u2019s their call. It\u2019s one of the privileges of holding the controlling stake in the team.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s really the bottom line. She can do whatever she wants to do. The coach is being scrutinized by tens of thousands in the stadium and millions watching on TV. Whether the owner is monitoring from the luxury suite or peering over the coach\u2019s shoulder, it\u2019s part and parcel of being an NFL head coach.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s important to delegate the biggest jobs in the football operation to qualified people and to get out of their way, Carlie Irsay-Gordon is acquiring data that will help her make important decisions. Over time, her \u201cfifth-grade reading level\u201d understanding will become more advanced, to the point of getting an NFL GED. Which would be much more than what Jones had when he made himself the GM of the Dallas Cowboys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon has had an active, visible presence on the team\u2019s sidelines for a while. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-873615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}