ESPN NFL Analyst — Former Indianapolis Colts & Green Bay Packers Center
Jeff Saturday's Apple Watch: From an Electrical Supply Store in Raleigh to Six Pro Bowls and a Super Bowl Ring
Undrafted in 1998. Cut by the Ravens without playing a single game. Returned to North Carolina and took a job managing an electrical supply store. Then a former college teammate walked into a general manager's office uninvited, in dirty sweats, and made a phone call that changed everything. Jeff Saturday spent 14 seasons as the best centre in the AFC, won a Super Bowl, earned six Pro Bowls, helped negotiate a landmark CBA, briefly became an NFL head coach with no coaching experience, and has been on ESPN's Get Up ever since. On his wrist: an Apple Watch.
| Jeff Saturday — Apple Watch on wrist. Source: ESPN / Get Up |
Jeff Saturday — Super Bowl champion, six-time Pro Bowl center, ESPN analyst |
Jeffrey Bryant Saturday was born June 18, 1975, in Atlanta, Georgia, and attended Shamrock High School in Decatur. His high school coach described him in a 2012 Sports Illustrated profile: "Eighty percent of our offence was behind Jeff. On defence we put Jeff on one side and all our other good players on the other side, because teams ran away from Jeff." He played college football at the University of North Carolina, captained the team for two years, earned first-team All-ACC honours in 1996 and 1997, made the conference's All-Academic team, and graduated with a degree in business. He was ranked eleventh among centres available in the 1998 NFL Draft — described by scouts as "an overachiever" who had "trouble matching up against power nose tackles." He was not selected.
The Baltimore Ravens signed him as an undrafted free agent in April 1998 and cut him seven weeks later without him playing a game. Saturday returned to Raleigh, North Carolina, and took a job as a manager at an electrical supply store. He was still there during the 1998 NFL season. Then his former college teammate Nate Hobgood-Chittick, who was on the Colts roster, walked uninvited into the office of Indianapolis general manager Bill Polian — in dirty sweats, by Hobgood-Chittick's own account — and told him: "There's a guy selling electrical supplies in Raleigh right now who whipped all those first-round draft choices at North Carolina." The Colts called Saturday. He signed, earned his first NFL start in November 1999, and proceeded to start every game at centre for the next twelve consecutive seasons.
Saturday anchored the offensive line that protected Peyton Manning for thirteen seasons in Indianapolis — and the Colts allowed the fewest quarterback sacks in the league across the 2004, 2005, and 2006 seasons. In the 2006 AFC Championship Game against the New England Patriots, Saturday recovered a fumble in the end zone and scored a touchdown, then delivered the decisive block on the game-winning touchdown run — described by Manning as "The Block," pancaking Vince Wilfork. Two weeks later, the Colts won Super Bowl XLI. Saturday earned six Pro Bowl selections in total (2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2012 — the last coming in his final season with the Green Bay Packers alongside Aaron Rodgers), two first-team All-Pro honours, and a place on the NFL's All-Decade Team for the 2000s. He was inducted into the Colts Ring of Honor in 2015. His 132 career wins as a Colt are second only to Manning's.
As a player Saturday served on the executive committee of the NFL Players' Association and was the lead negotiator for the players' side in the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement that ended the NFL lockout — a role that required exactly the kind of intelligence and composure his coaches had described for two decades. He joined ESPN in July 2013, the same year he retired. In November 2022, Colts owner Jim Irsay named him interim head coach following the firing of Frank Reich — despite Saturday having no professional coaching experience beyond leading a Georgia high school programme. The appointment drew widespread criticism and a record of 1–7 followed, though Saturday himself was broadly respected by his players for his honesty and leadership. He returned to ESPN for the 2023 season and has remained there since.
"There's a guy selling electrical supplies in Raleigh right now who whipped all those first-round draft choices at North Carolina." — Nate Hobgood-Chittick, to Colts GM Bill Polian, 1998
Timepiece
Apple Watch
The Apple Watch, first released in 2015 and now the world's best-selling wearable, is a platform built around continuous, passive utility — the same principle that defined Jeff Saturday's playing career. The current lineup runs from the standard Series 11 (always-on Retina display, full health sensor suite, GPS, cellular connectivity) to the SE and the Ultra — a titanium-cased model designed for extreme conditions with a larger display, extended battery, and precision dual-frequency GPS. All models pair with iPhone, update via watchOS over the air, and integrate with the full Apple ecosystem.
The health monitoring suite is comprehensive and continuous: heart rate, ECG, blood oxygen, sleep tracking, and — introduced with watchOS 11 — sleep apnea detection, a feature of particular relevance to larger, heavier athletes whose body composition can increase apnea risk. Fall detection and crash detection run passively. GPS tracks workouts. Communications — calls, messages, and notifications — arrive at the wrist without requiring a phone. The watch handles all of this without demanding attention, adapts itself to the wearer's patterns over time, and improves continuously through software updates. It is, in short, the kind of tool that makes everything around it work better while remaining largely invisible — which is how Saturday played centre for fourteen seasons.
| Platform | Apple Watch (watchOS) — paired with iPhone |
| Models | Series 11 / SE / Ultra — aluminium, stainless steel, or titanium |
| Health | Heart rate, ECG, blood oxygen, sleep, sleep apnea detection, fall & crash detection |
| Connectivity | Calls, messages, notifications, Apple Pay — hands-free on wrist |
| Navigation | GPS with haptic turn-by-turn directions |
| Software | watchOS — over-the-air updates, continuously improving |
| Price range | From ~$249 (SE) to ~$799+ (Ultra) |
The Story Nobody Cheered For
Jeff Saturday is one of the best stories in NFL history, and because he played centre, most people do not know it. He was cut and went back to selling electrical supplies. A teammate in dirty sweats walked uninvited into a general manager's office and vouched for him. He signed, started the following season, and spent the next twelve years protecting the most valuable quarterback in football. In the AFC Championship game that sent the Colts to their Super Bowl, he scored a touchdown and then delivered a block that Peyton Manning — who had rather a lot to say about the game — chose to name after his centre. He then negotiated a collective bargaining agreement. Then coached a high school team for three years. Then became an NFL head coach overnight with no professional coaching experience. Then returned to ESPN.
The Apple Watch on his wrist at Get Up is the appropriate accessory for a career built on competence, adaptability, and doing the work that makes other people's performance possible. It monitors what needs to be monitored, delivers what needs to be delivered, and does it all without requiring recognition. Saturday would understand that instinctively. He wore a number for fourteen seasons that nobody except the defensive tackle across from him could have told you.
Two Former NFL Centres, One Watch
This is now the second article on Spot.Watch featuring a former NFL centre wearing an Apple Watch on an ESPN set — Damien Woody, who anchored the New England offensive line through the early Belichick dynasty, wears one too. The position selects for a particular kind of intelligence — reading defensive fronts, making pre-snap adjustments across an entire offensive line, communicating changes under noise in front of tens of thousands of people — and then rewards it with exactly zero individual recognition. The Apple Watch makes a similar bargain with its wearer: exceptional competence, continuous operation, total anonymity. For offensive linemen turned ESPN analysts, it fits like a second career.
More Apple Watch Spots on Spot.Watch
- Jon Favreau — Apple Watch
- Daniel Cormier — Club Shay Shay
- Damian Woody — Apple Watch
- Jeff Saturday — Apple Watch
- Franz von Holzhausen — Apple Watch
- Jason Cammisa — Apple Watch
- Kalen DeBoer — Apple Watch
- Chase Hughes — Apple Watch
- Jon Fortt (CNBC) — Apple Watch Series 11
- Joel Klatt — Apple Watch
- Jim Farley — Apple Watch Ultra
- Jim Cramer — Apple Watch
- Dan Orlovsky — Apple Watch
- Amna Nawaz — Apple Watch
- Kim Java — Apple Watch
- Urban Meyer — Apple Watch
- Anthony Pompliano — Apple Watch
- Mark Cuban — Apple Watch
- James Quincey (CEO, Coca-Cola) — Apple Watch
- Sam the Cooking Guy — Apple Watch
- Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) — Apple Watch
And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.
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