Not even a day ago, the Indianapolis Colts announced that Josh McDaniels was going to be their next head coach. It took less than eight hours for that announcement to be out of date, as McDaniels eventually reneged on his agreement with the team and decided to stay with the Patriots as their offensive coordinator instead. 

In the interim, according to The MMQB's Peter King, McDaniels met for hours with Patriots owner Robert Kraft and coach Bill Belichick, who convinced him to remain in New England but did not give him written assurance that he would succeed Belichick if and when the Pats coach decided to call it a career. (It likely didn't hurt that that wound up giving him a raise, per ESPN.com's Adam Schefter.)

A source close to the story said late Tuesday night that, as part of his agreement to stay in New England, McDaniels got no written assurance that he will succeed the 65-year-old Belichick when he walks away from the job. No one knows when that will be. Belichick will coach at least this year, and at the Super Bowl last week, one longtime Belichick acquaintance said he thought Belichick would coach multiple years in New England, despite the reports of discord between him and Kraft.

After he decided to spurn the Colts and stay with the Pats, McDaniels' agent told him he was making a huge mistake, according to NFL.com's Mike Garafolo. 

Garafolo reported on NFL Network's Good Morning Football that even McDaniels' agent, Bob Lamonte, told the OC that he's making perhaps the biggest professional mistake of his career by backing out of this Colts job at this point, according to sources informed of the talks between McDaniels and his agent.

It's not hard to see why Lamonte -- who also represents Colts general manager Chris Ballard -- would have issued a caution to McDaniels after making such a decision. There were questions about McDaniels stemming from his last coaching stop with the Denver Broncos. While he's rehabbed much of his reputation both on and off the field in recent years, Tuesday night's decision likely undid all of that in the eyes of 31 other teams.

It only takes one team to overlook this episode and decide McDaniels is still worth a shot. We've seen it happen in professional sports before. 

Current Oklahoma City Thunder coach Billy Donovan had an agreement to leave the University of Florida to become the head coach of the Orlando Magic in 2007, but he ultimately decided to stay at UF instead -- even after giving an introductory press conference in Orlando and a goodbye press conference in Gainesville. It took another eight years before an NBA team was willing to give him an opportunity, but it happened.

It could happen for McDaniels as well, whether in New England or elsewhere. The NBA is generally a league that is more forgiving and more comfortable with risk than the NFL, though, so it's likely going to take some time and some serious mending of fences around the league before another (non-Patriots) opportunity arises for him. Of course, he may just be OK with the Patriots being the only opportunity he gets.