For the eight people left on the planet Earth that have not seen the embarrassing fake punt by the Colts on Sunday Night Football, here you go. For the rest of us, let us talk about how that play should have been the final nail in the coffin of Chuck Pagano’s tenure as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
Chuck Pagano is a well spoken man and true class act. He’s defeated cancer and has manned the Colts to AFC South championships (I’ll even give him the Bruce Arians one) in each of his seasons in charge of the team. He’ll probably even win the South again this season as the rest of the team seems more likely to challenge each other for the number one pick in the draft than the Colts for the division crown. But for a team that should wants to be discussed as one of the NFL’s elite, Pagano is not the man for the job.
Sunday night was just another example of how on a big stage Pagano tries to hang with the big boys and ends up licking his wounds in defeat. Now nobody currently employed as a head coach in the NFL has Bill Belichick’s pedigree, but the disparity between the competency displayed by Belichick and Pagano in prime time was vast. From simple play calling and personnel usage to the fateful fake punt, Pagano showed zero of the qualities that come with a head coach of a title contender. Instead he stood confused on the sidelines in shrugging disbelief as each of his clever ideas came up empty.
This isn’t to say he is the only one to blame. When you’re a team that has played the way that Indianapolis has through six games, there is plenty of blame to go around. If Pagano gets the axe, general manager Ryan Grigson (who has been radio silent since the first day of training camp) should be right behind him with all of his belongings in a box. The architect of this mish-mash roster has shown little acumen through the draft and even less through free agency. Since the 2012 Draft that netted him Luck at number one and T.Y. Hilton in the third round, he’s struggled to fill the glaring holes on the roster through the draft. That was most notably shown again this past draft when instead of addressing the razor thin offensive line crew or defense, Grigson went with another wide receiver in Miami’s Phillip Dorsett. Dorsett is a good player but another receiver was near the bottom of Indy’s needs list. But hey, he drafted tackle Denzelle Good in the seventh round out of the esteemed Mars Hill. Good has yet to log a single second of playing time this year. His free agent buys have been just as spotty with emphasis made more to seemingly acquire guys to move merchandise rather than win football games.
But for now it all circles back to that one play. That one moment in time that fully illustrated Pagano’s lack of preparation, communication, and situational awareness. It was described by some as the worst play ever, and if isn’t your number one it would at least be on your medal stand. Nothing about the play had any chance of working and the timing, execution, and following result by New England all made it that much worse. Instead of being lauded for keeping pace with the league’s premier franchise, the Colts and their coach are the butt of jokes throughout not only the football community but the media as a whole. He says he doesn’t regret the play call but said that he needs to communicate better with his players and prepare them better. For a lack of more eloquent terms, “Well, duh!”
Any decent poker player would know that Pagano is a bad hand. One can only bluff on a bad hand so many times. It should finally be time for the Colts to fold. Pagano bet on himself this offseason by rejecting an extension and letting Grigson fire all the bullets in the draft gun when he is clearly a bad shot. All metaphors and analogies aside though, it is time that owner Jim Irsay made some positive headlines for once and find himself a new coach.