Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon has had an active, visible presence on the team’s sidelines for a while. It predates her tenure as the controlling owner of the franchise.
She has explained her approach in the past. It wasn’t an issue when the Colts were 7-0 in 2025.
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 — mainly because she has been criticized for it.
Irsay-Gordon addressed the situation in comments to Bridget Condon of Front Office Sports Tonight.
“I 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’re trying to do, depending on the week and depending on our opponent and depending on the situation,” Irsay-Gordon said.
“But 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, really to understand. And I think that’s what the best teams do.”
In June 2025, she talked about her approach during games.
“I need to be able to say, ‘Is this person full of BS? Do they even know what they’re talking about?’” Irsay-Gordon said at the time. “It is such a complex organism, a football team and how it operates. . . . You could say, ‘Oh, that person ran that route wrong.’ Then you learn, ‘Oh, someone tagged the wrong WR and it wasn’t really the player’s fault, it was the person that called it.
“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.”
I’ve personally got no problem with it. Other owners should do it. Inevitably, they’ll 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.
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’s doing that aren’t so obvious — to the viewers or to the coaches. In a word, Irsay-Gordon’s current approach can be “messy.”
As another coach put it, there’s a potential performative element to the exercise, whether it’s 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.
One important question that should be asked at some point is whether she’s doing what some other owners do — wasting the coach’s valuable time the day after a game with a long meeting to rehash everything that happened.
Still, she’s 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’t fit.
Likewise, plenty of owners end up on the sidelines of a game. It’s their call. It’s one of the privileges of holding the controlling stake in the team.
And that’s 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’s shoulder, it’s part and parcel of being an NFL head coach.
While it’s 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 “fifth-grade reading level” 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.