Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

Colts at Titans, 1 p.m. Sunday, CBS

HOUSTON — No, you don’t dump Chuck Pagano right now.

That’s out there, this idea that Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay should fire his football coach after one of the worst losses of Pagano’s four-plus seasons, that 26-23 choke Sunday night at Houston. It’s all over this thing us cool kids call “Colts Twitter,” but don’t limit yourself to just one form of social media. Fire him? It’s on Facebook. It’s on Instagram. Pretty sure I saw something about it on Uber.

It’s ubiquitous, is my point. Colts fans are mad, madder than I’ve ever seen them — save for that 45-7 loss to New England two seasons ago in the AFC title game. They seem madder, actually, than some of the Colts after the game Sunday night. Other than running back Frank Gore, that was one resigned room. Unhappy, yes. Stunned, yes. Furious? Nah, not really.

Furious was you.

And you want Pagano gone by Tuesday. Lots of you do. Let me tell you why that’s a terrible idea.

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There’s more than one reason, but let’s start here: If you fire Pagano with the idea that this 2016 season remains salvageable — and in the AFC South, anything seems possible — then you fire him with the idea that someone on the current staff could do better.

Anyone would be better!

Yes, yes, I hear some of you. And in a vacuum it is rather hard to imagine anybody on staff at 7001 West 56th, up to and including the folks who fertilize the facility’s sod, doing worse than Pagano this season.

But we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in a world where Irsay and General Manager Ryan Grigson have allowed Pagano to fill his staff with flunkies and failures, people who appear to be on the same pedestrian page. Let’s look at the candidates:

Offensive line coach Joe Philbin? He was a head coach of the Miami Dolphins from 2012 to early 2015, though his 24-28 tenure was best known for creating and coddling the monster known as Richie Incognito. As if that weren’t a negative enough, try this one: Philbin is said to have one area of expertise, the offensive line.

The Colts’ offensive line sucks.

Offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski was a head coach in Cleveland. He went 4-12 in 2013 and was fired. Nobody wins in Cleveland, but 4-12 is 4-12. And you’ve seen the Colts offense, the way the team meanders around for four quarters trying to figure out what on earth it wants to be that day. Promote the brains behind that bunch?

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Defensive coordinator Ted Monachino has the best demeanor on staff. He’s fiery and honest, and I can see him being the bad cop to Pagano’s relentlessly good one. But in the Colts’ worst two losses, the smallish choke against Detroit and the massive one in Houston, the defense — Monachino’s defense — was the guiltiest party.

Quarterbacks coach Brian Schottenheimer was once seen as a rising star in the business for a very good reason: His last name is Schottenheimer. Is he a good coach? The evidence says no. But let’s be clear: His last name is Schottenheimer. That’s fooled a lot of people over the years, including Pagano this past offseason. Maybe it would fool Irsay.

I could do this all day, go up and down the Colts coaching staff without finding a decent interim replacement for Pagano, but let’s leave it there. And then let’s acknowledge this:

Pagano’s subpar staff isn’t even the most fundamental reason why firing him now would be such a bad idea.

Again, the theory behind Irsay making a midseason move is that the 2016 playoffs remain a possibility. And they do. The AFC South is so bad, and so bunched together, that everyone in the division remains a serious contender. The Colts are in last, but the gap from top to bottom is so small that Indianapolis — by virtue of that choke Sunday night — toppled from what would have been a tie for first into outright last place.

It won’t take much to get back to the top of this division, is my point.

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But only if the team is all in. And the Colts might just revolt if Pagano is fired. They love the guy, so loyal that only one player in my three seasons here has said anything remotely negative about Pagano. I’m not telling you who that guy is — we were talking off the record — but the point remains: Despite all evidence to the contrary, the locker room believes in Chuck.

And from what we’ve seen, this is a mentally weak team. If they’re not being absolutely destroyed by New England, by Pittsburgh,by Dallas — hell, if they’re not being destroyed 51-16 by Jacksonville — they’re coughing up a lead in the final minute against the lousy Lions, or blowing a 14-point advantage in the final three minutes against the J.J. Watt-less, Brock Osweiler-led Texans.

The Colts are soft. Would they go in the tank the rest of the 2016 season without Pagano? I’m thinking they might, and I’m not seeing anyone on the staff I’d trust to pull them out of it.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

Colts at Titans, 1 p.m. Sunday, CBS