If anything, I think that Ballard and Reich was too aligned on their thinking on how to construct the team and that ended in a stalemate, not enough fresh ideas and challenges to offset the status quo, and the blood basically stopped running through the veins of the team, so to speak.
When Reich was fired, it was practically only Irsay talking at the presser about it, Ballard was just sitting there , like he was almost not a part of it. Very telling.
I just think Irsay had enough of Frank and wanted to send some shock waves through the dying team with the hire of Saturday. Not sure he really was thinking he would be the HC, long term, no matter what he said. He basically held Ballard out of firing Frank and finding the interim HC, but was doing this as a favor to Ballard, not the other way around.