INDIANAPOLIS – He’s been on the wrong side of these a few too many times, so Chuck Pagano is unfortunately well-equipped to handle embarrassing losses like this.

And yet, there was something more serious and more sullen about the coach’s demeanor after his Indianapolis Colts suffered their first regular-season shutout of the 21st century.

The Colts entered Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars having been outscored by comical margins in second halves, allowing the second-most yards in the NFL and looking like a team on track for a top-10 draft pick.

Still, this game was so hideous, so alarmingly uncompetitive, that it felt like rock bottom.

Jags 27, Colts 0. Let that marinate.

Read more on the Colts:

► Doyel: Pointing fingers at clueless T.Y. Hilton and the hopeless Colts

► Highlights, stats, photos and reaction from the game

► Colts shut out by Jaguars. How bad was it? Let us count the ways.

► Sign up: Get our best Colts coverage delivered to your inbox.

Once you absorb the thoroughness of this beating, digest Jacksonville’s 518 total yards and Blake Bortles’ 330 passing yards – Blake Bortles! – you quickly come to understand why Pagano looked so emotionally exhausted in his postgame news conference.

He is a coach with a gigantic mess on his hands. And he is fresh out of answers. Oh, and the hot seat he’s been occupying seemingly for years? It’s practically on fire.

It feels like everything is on the table after this one, up to and including Pagano's immediate dismissal.

“This falls squarely on my shoulders and obviously I didn’t have this team prepared and ready to go,” Pagano said afterward. Pagano was, per usual, trying to deflect blame from his players by pointing the finger at himself. But Pagano need not encourage anyone to blame him. Fans are already screaming for his head.

And those calls will only grow louder after Sunday.

The Colts in 2017 have been a team that has managed to, at times, be surprisingly competitive. They went to Seattle and played like they thought they could win – for a half. They dominated the Cleveland Browns for a time, before making the eventual victory needlessly difficult. The Colts even took a 10-point lead in the third quarter of last Monday’s game against the Tennessee Titans.

At times, this team that’s missing its franchise quarterback while suffering other assorted key injuries has shown fight. They predictably run out of gas, but there was fight.

And then Sunday happened. On Sunday, the fight seemed lacking.

This has always been Pagano’s greatest ability: His uncanny capacity to get his team to buy in. If he’s lost that, what else is there?

Pagano knows his locker room is teetering. You could see it in his animated display during the news conference. And you can hear it in his words.

“We’re professionals. We’ll show up and go back to work,” he implored his players. “That’s what you do. When you get your (expletive) knocked down, you get up off the mat and you fight. Period. You don’t tuck your tail like a coward.

“You fight.”

Pagano will have to make that case as demonstratively as he ever has, because there are so many reasons this locker room is at risk of tuning him out. Players see what you see: Questionable play calling and decision-making from Pagano’s offensive and defensive staffs.

Don’t think for a moment players aren’t quietly asking the same questions you are.

Another factor: The roster has been turned over so dramatically by General Manager Chris Ballard that many of the veteran players who held things together in the past are gone. Those are the men who often would answer the puzzling questions younger players would pose. They would keep things from fracturing. This group, however, has a completely different makeup. It will put more of the onus on Pagano to keep things intact.

There certainly are questions about why a player like second-round pick Quincy Wilson was inactive on Sunday, on a day starting cornerback Rashaan Melvin suffered a concussion in the first quarter. His replacement, Christopher Milton, gave up a 52-yard completion on his first snap.

Running back Matt Jones also was inactive, one week after the Colts’ best short-yardage back – Robert Turbin – suffered a season-ending elbow injury. Jones, for the record, is listed at 6-2 and 239 pounds.

Look, this isn’t all on Pagano. In some ways, he’s in a no-win position. His quarterback, Jacoby Brissett is struggling right now with decision-making and accuracy. There came a time Sunday when he looked absolutely overwhelmed.

But Brissett’s offensive line did him no favors – as T.Y. Hilton articulated with critical comments about the unit after the game. Brissett was sacked 10 times, sometimes because of his hesitance to deliver the football and other times because the Colts couldn’t protect him.

Defensively, the Colts embarrassed themselves, with Jacksonville backup running back T.J. Yeldon rushing for a career-high 122 yards on nine carries (13.6 yards per carry). The Jaguars didn’t even miss star rookie back Leonard Fournette, who missed the game with an ankle injury.

Yes, there were plenty of individual failures beyond Pagano’s that led to this result. But Pagano is the poster child for everything that is wrong with this team. And that puts him in the crosshairs after a loss like this.

Again, Pagano is well-versed in such losses.

He was the coach when the Colts allowed Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger to throw six touchdown passes. He was the coach when the-then St. Louis Rams came into Indianapolis and won by 30. And, now, he can lay claim to being the coach when the Colts allowed their first regular-season shutout loss since 1993 -- when Brissett was two weeks old.

But was this one the breaking point? Maybe not, but Pagano sure seemed to realize it could be.

“We’ve got to fight,” he said. “You’ve got to fight and you’ve got to stay together. Stay together and fight.”

That gets a lot tougher when a team reaches rock bottom. And Sunday felt like exactly that.

Follow Colts Insider Stephen Holder on Twitter: @HolderStephen.