Doyel: Chuck Pagano is a liability on game day
- Colts at Broncos, 4:25 p.m. Sunday, CBS
INDIANAPOLIS – We could tap dance around this, or we could just say it:
Chuck Pagano is a liability on game day.
This isn’t merely a reaction to that 39-35 loss to Detroit on Sunday, though it was enough of a dumpster fire to fuel anything you’re about to read. That was the last straw, for me, as it relates to a coach who is beloved by his players yet can’t get them consistently ready to play. A coach who knows the modern-day football lingo – twitchy is the new “explosive,” position flex the new “versatile,” second level the new “linebackers” – but manages the game like it’s 1987. That’s the year Pagano received his first full-time job, coaching linebackers for Boise State. He coached defense for a quarter of a century before taking over the Indianapolis Colts.
So why has defense been such a disaster since he got here?
Please, don’t look at me like that. It's impossible not to respect Chuck Pagano the man. He’s an inspiration, not just beating leukemia in 2012 but waging war on that disease since then – raising a small fortune for the fight and reaching out to encourage cancer patients with zero fanfare. A guy like this? You have to love a guy like this.
But a coach like this? You have to wonder about a coach like this.
Doyel: It’s possible we’re overreacting – but we’re not
Let’s separate the two, the coach from the man, and start by pointing out some numbers that say I’m wrong, Pagano’s great, nothing to see here. Since 2012 the Colts are 41-24, a .631 winning percentage that ranks Pagano 18th all time among coaches with at least 65 games of experience. He’s ahead of Hall of Famers Bill Walsh (.609) and Tom Landry (.607).
In one-possession games, seemingly the gold standard of coaching, Pagano is 27-9. That’s a win total and percentage (.750) that lead the NFL since 2012.
There is one mitigating factor here, one name that just might deserve more credit than Pagano or anyone else for those lofty numbers, a name I will submit and then move on: Andrew Luck.
Speaking of numbers …
Nine of the Colts’ 27 losses since 2012 have been blowouts of 22 points or more. Fully one-third of the time the Colts lose, they lose big. Nobody in the NFL is close to 33 percent, not even the dreadful Tennessee Titans, next worst at 25.5 percent.
The Colts have trailed by at least 10 points in the first half in 27 games since 2012, tied for first with two dregs of NFL society: Jacksonville and Oakland.
How does a team play this badly, this early, this consistently?
If only it were the slow starts and the roll-over-and-quit finishes. You could maybe, I mean possibly, pin that on the players and the man who put these rosters together: General Manager Ryan Grigson.
But it’s worse than those numbers. Just because we have to, let's start with that fake punt last season against New England, a horrible piece of coaching not for the call but the timing. All week Pagano had practiced that bizarre formation, with Clayton Geathers as the snapper. Geathers was injured in the first half, but that didn't stop Pagano from calling for the fake anyway. He put in Griff Whalen, and what do you know? Whalen didn't know what to do. He snapped it with zero chance of success, and the game slipped away right there.
That was a lightning flash of stupid. What happened Sunday was more of a steady drizzle of dumb.
First, a review of Pagano's three mistakes in the final 75 seconds, all required to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory:
1.) Calling timeout with 1:15 left and the Colts on the Detroit 12, driving toward the eventual go-ahead touchdown.
2.) Not having cannon-legged Pat McAfee drive the kickoff from the 50 high into the air, forcing the Lions to return it – and waste valuable seconds – against a coverage unit that would have been in the return man’s face before he caught it.
3.) Playing a soft zone in the final 37 seconds, essentially dropping seven defenders into coverage, giving the Lions time to make three easy completions and call three timeouts before kicking a 43-yard field goal for the win.
After having 24 hours to think about it, Pagano on Monday expressed remorse bordering on mortification for that series of mistakes. Kidding! Pagano said he had “no regrets, I wouldn’t do anything different” about the timeout and offered there was “not much thought there” regarding the possibility of a short kickoff.
His reasoning for both is ridiculous. On the timeout, Pagano postulated that “we snapped that last ball I think with 1:40 on the clock and we took a timeout with 75 seconds left in the game.”
In other words, why the big deal about a stupid timeout? We couldn’t have burned that much more time off the clock.
Thing is, the Colts snapped the ball with 1:23 left, then quickly called timeout with 1:15 left. How will Pagano correct his mistakes if he can’t be bothered to learn just how badly he screwed up in the first place?
Doyel: Passive Pagano gives game away
His defense of that kickoff borders on coaching malpractice. This is how Pagano justified giving “not much thought there” to having McAfee force a return with 37 seconds left:
“I’ve been burned in the past with end-of-half, end-of-game things where you kick a ball when you are supposed to kick it out of bounds and you kick it to a guy you’re not supposed to and he runs it back for a touchdown,” he said. “All of that sounds good until you do that and then something happens and they run it back for a touchdown.”
He was talking about the Denver game of a year ago, when the Colts won 27-24 but surrendered Omar Bolden’s 83-yard punt return for a touchdown on the final play of the first half. Maybe Pagano doesn’t, but you see the difference between giving up a touchdown return to end the half and kicking it through the end zone with 37 seconds left, don’t you?
Pagano knows more football than you and I could ever learn, but his explanations for those two coaching decisions are – for lack of a better word – lacking.
His teams do win, though, and players love him. Even if he doesn’t give them an advantage over the coach on the other sideline. Even when that coach is Jim Caldwell.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.
Colts at Broncos, 4:25 p.m. Sunday, CBS