Insider: Why Colts RBs coach Scottie Montgomery doesn't think he was a fit as play caller

INDIANAPOLIS — Scottie Montgomery wants to be an NFL offensive coordinator.

Interviewed for that spot in Carolina and New Orleans last offseason. When the Colts fired former offensive coordinator Marcus Brady, Montgomery was the man former head coach Frank Reich tabbed to take on an increased role in the offense.

Montgomery has prior experience.

Before he made the jump to the NFL, Montgomery was an offensive coordinator at Duke and Maryland, plus a head coach at East Carolina who was heavily involved in the play calling. When Reich hired Montgomery to be the team’s running backs coach, he did it in part because Montgomery is an expert in the RPO world, a trend that has swept across the NFL the past couple of seasons.

But Montgomery did not get the play-calling job after Reich was fired and interim coach Jeff Saturday took over, and it is unclear how involved he was in the search process. Pass game specialist Parks Frazier was promoted into the role.

Montgomery, speaking Thursday for the first time since the move, declined to say if he’d been offered the play-calling role.

“We made a decision as a group,” Montgomery said. “It was truly one of those types of decisions.”

Make no mistake about it, Montgomery wants to run an NFL offense.

“Of course I want to be a coordinator in this league,” Montgomery said. “I think that’s pretty evident around the league. People know that. But I also know there’s a lot that goes with having the responsibility of the room that I have.”

Montgomery’s role in the running back room, and the responsibilities he added in the wake of Brady’s firing, complicated a potential move to play-caller.

Unlike Frazier, whose role as pass game specialist allowed him to float throughout the offense, Montgomery already had a dedicated specialty, and he hadn’t been a regular in the quarterback room with Matt Ryan, Sam Ehlinger and Nick Foles.

And while Montgomery does not believe a play-caller has to be in the quarterback room in every situation, he does believe the exception would only come into play if the team had been set up that way throughout the offseason and into training camp.

“There’s a relationship that comes with being in the quarterback room or not being in the quarterback room,” Montgomery said. “If I wasn’t in the (other rooms), it might have been a little bit easier.”

The Colts coaching staff has rallied behind Frazier, the 30-year-old who’s spent more time than anybody else on staff in the offense Reich built in Indianapolis, the one the Colts have been running the past three weeks, albeit a simplified version.

Montgomery is working as hard as ever, trying to find fixes on an offense that hasn’t shown much all season long.

The big, explosive plays that were there in previous seasons have been few and far between, and the Indianapolis offense hasn’t handled the pressure of driving the length of the field well. Too often, Colts drives have been derailed by sacks, turnovers and other missed opportunities; a byproduct of the team’s inability to rip off big chunks of yardage with any regularity.

“We have to grind it out,” Montgomery said. “When you grind it out, you have more opportunities to make mistakes. When you make big plays, you have less opportunities to make mistakes and more opportunities to score points.”

Montgomery believes his time as an NFL offensive coordinator will come.

Where that will be is hard to say. Montgomery, like the rest of the Colts assistants, knows that change might be coming at the end of the season. Any time a team changes the head coach, a significant portion of the staff will not be back, even when an interim has a chance to coach with the rest of the staff.

For the moment, though, Montgomery is focused less on his long-term aspirations and much more on how the Colts can finally find a rhythm on offense.

“I’m probably a little bit more emotional than a lot of our other coaches, especially on the sideline, but it’s that time,” Montgomery said. “We’ve got to do what we have to do to make sure we get the most out of each one of those guys.”

A task that is one of the few things that hasn’t changed this season.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: Why RBs coach Scottie Montgomery didn't fit in play calling role