Sloppy Colts threatening franchise penalty record

INDIANAPOLIS – It’s almost like the Indianapolis Colts’ 2016 season is stuck on a loop. Each game seems indistinguishable from any other.

As a result, the fallout tends to have a recurring theme, too.

So, there was coach Chuck Pagano on Monday, standing behind his lectern reviewing Sunday’s 34-26 win over the Tennessee Titans, relishing in the positives and reckoning with the negatives.

The former includes the razor sharp play of quarterback Andrew Luck, the reliability of kicker Adam Vinatieri, the excellent pass protection and the defense’s ability to recover long enough to slam the door shut.

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As for the latter, well, you know the drill. Penalties. Missed tackles. Mindless mistakes. More mindless mistakes. Rinse, repeat.

Here’s the thing: This season, no matter how many plays Luck makes or how many touchdowns T.Y. Hilton catches, will continue to have a firm ceiling if the Colts’ many miscues continue.

Sunday’s game tells you all you need to know. It was a contest in which the Colts did so many things well, and yet, they had to put together a game-winning drive in the fourth quarter of a game they once led 17-6.

The Colts are nothing if not predictable, and they did it again Sunday. Pagano is growing weary of the weekly exercise of trying to come up with solutions. So he proposed a different one Monday.

“Quit talking about it,” he joked. “It’s kind of like slow starts. We’d been talking about those for four years. We quit talking about them and now we’re getting off to fast starts. But in all reality, we have to clean some things up.”

When owner Jim Irsay said last week that the Colts “could be 6-0 right now if the ball bounced our way,” he could not have been more wrong.

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Bad bounces happen when a receiver slips and a pass is intercepted. What the Colts have made a habit of are the kind of mistakes over which they have some control.

They committed 12 penalties Sunday and have been flagged 64 times this season — fifth most in the NFL (five have been declined or offset). The Colts are on pace to finish with 134 accepted penalties, second-most in franchise history.

How do you overcome that?

Pagano was asked about the success he enjoyed on this front in 2013, when the Colts were the least-penalized team in the NFL (66 penalties). What worked then? And why isn’t it working now?

“We’ve always stressed the importance of eliminating penalties, every single year,” he said. “And we’ll continue to do that. That team was different than this one. We’re coaching and talking about the same things that we always have.”

But it’s not just penalties. There’s dropped passes, missed assignments and even the rookie mistakes made by new punt returner Chester Rogers on special teams.

As far as that goes, some things actually can be explained. In his first game filling in for Quan Bray (on injured reserve), Rogers misjudged two punts, fair catching one at the 7-yard line, then making a reckless decision to return a kick that he fielded at the 1-yard line.

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“That’s what you get with young players,” Pagano said. “That’s why you close your eyes when the ball gets punted. It takes time.”

But the Colts don’t have time. They’re 3-4. And despite the promises to clean things up, there’s no evidence to date to suggest they will. Just look at the repetitive nature of the games. Do what Andrew Luck did Sunday, when he came to terms with their reality by saying of the team’s mistakes, “We overcame it this time. In other games we haven’t.”

The Colts overcame themselves in Tennessee. They did not overcome themselves against Houston and Detroit and Jacksonville and Denver. Each and every one of their losses can be traced to a single issue. And every one of their wins came in spite of those same flaws.

This merry-go-round that is the 2016 Colts just keeps turning. And if it doesn’t stop, the best the Colts can hope for is their current win-one-lose-one pattern that is effectively a road to nowhere.

Follow IndyStar Colts Insider Stephen Holder on Twitter: @HolderStephen.