“It’s on me,’’ Pagano said after the Colts 27-0 shutout loss. “I didn’t have them ready to play. Period.’’

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - For weeks and even months, the feeling here has been that the Colts are best off letting Chuck Pagano take his lumps during this rebuilding season, that a mid-season coaching change rarely, if ever, helps a terrible team – and the Colts are a terrible team – change course. But after a day when the Colts weren’t even mildly competitive or prepared, on a day when they got shut out, 27-0 by the Jacksonville Jaguars, the team’s first shutout loss since 1993, it’s difficult to reach any other conclusion than this one:

The Colts need to let Pagano go.

Now.

Who replaces him? I’m not sure it really matters at this point. Maybe Rob Chudzinski, although he’s coming off a game when his offense got shut out for the first time in the Colts’ last 375 games. Maybe Joe Philbin, but the offensive line coach just saw his troops give up 10 sacks and nearly get Jacoby Brissett killed. There are no good choices, just as jettisoning Pagano is not a good choice, but it’s the only choice, even if it only rates as change for change’s sake.

He has lost this team.

It’s one thing to lose. It’s quite another to lose this way. After the game, I walked down the hallway back to the press box and encountered general manager Chris Ballard. His face was red, his features pinched and he was shaking his head. No words necessary.

How many times can a head coach say “It’s on me. It’s my fault. I didn’t have them prepared,’’ without observers ultimately reaching the conclusion that it is, in fact, the head coach’s fault – with a lot of help from his overmatched coaching staff?

Some actual anger from Pagano today..he seems mad and defeated. #WTHR pic.twitter.com/8OhkkNboqK — dave calabro (@calabro13sports) October 22, 2017



If you don’t think Pagano has lost this team, you didn’t see Vontae Davis’ half-hearted effort to intercept a pass toward the Jacksonville sideline.

If you don’t think Pagano has lost this team, you didn’t see their efforts to tackle people, especially in the secondary when guys were making business decisions.

If you don’t think Pagano has lost this team, note that the head coach did not pull Brissett in the fourth quarter because Brissett insisted on staying in the game and going down with the ship. Brissett deserves credit for his desire to remain in the game, but on a day when he was getting hammered time and time again, it was up to the head coach to say, “Sorry, kid, but we need you for the rest of the season, or until Andrew Luck comes back, so take a seat.’’

If you don’t think Pagano has lost this team, you didn’t hear T.Y. Hilton, who gets high marks for honesty but broke the player code when he blasted an offensive line that surrendered 10 sacks – some of them coverage sacks, some of them because Jacoby Brissett held the ball too long, but 10 sacks nonetheless. Hilton insisted the wide receivers were winning their individual matchups, then offered this.

“The O-line’s just got to play better,’’ Hilton said. “…We’ve got to take pride up front and block for him (Brissett). What if we put them back there and take those hits?’’

Yeah, it’s going to get very interesting at West 56th Street.

After the game, Pagano talked about the importance of staying together, but listening to Hilton, it’s clear that Hilton missed the memo. Again, he was just being honest. But the ethos of the locker room is this: You don’t publicly call out teammates for their performances. Fissures are opening. Lots of fissures. Turning into fault lines.

“Couldn’t protect,’’ Pagano said. “Couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t get off the field on third down. Didn’t play well in the red area. Gave up big plays. There’s a lot to fix, obviously. Again, this falls squarely on my shoulders and obviously I didn’t have this team prepared and ready to go.’’

Pagano also took the blame for that mildly insane quarterback sneak on fourth-and-2 at the Jacksonville 6-yard line. We may never know what truly happened, or didn’t happen, but there was Brissett, going nowhere, the Colts’ one decent scoring chance scuttled. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be humorous. And it came after a timeout, no less. They had a timeout to discuss the play and still screwed it up. What were they talking about on the sideline? The Hegelian Dialectic? Burmese cooking?

“It wasn’t designed to happen the way that it happened,’’ Pagano said. “It’s on me. It wasn’t on him, that’s on me. We didn’t get the right play in. There was confusion. The kid tried to do the best he could. That’s on me.’’

Said Brissett: “Just have to be better in those situations.’’

I pressed Brissett, looking for some kind of explanation, but there was none forthcoming. “Just a bad play on my part, but we’ve got to be better in those situations.’’

Oh.

Well, that clears that up.

Look, this is Pagano’s sixth year. This is the year Jim Irsay insisted was going to be the one that featured the best version of Pagano yet. And yet, the same mistakes keep happening. The foolish penalties early in the game. The lack of basic execution. The poor tackling. The communications gaffes.

If you’re looking for positives, well, at least the Colts didn’t blow a second-half lead, as was the case the past five games. This one was over shortly after the dying strains of the National Anthem, the Jags scoring two quick touchdowns, the Colts abandoning the run and playing right into Jacksonville’s hand. The Jags lead the league in sacks – they call themselves Sacksonville – and they brought the pain. Granted, the Colts’ offensive line is decimated – they lost Ryan Kelly to a hamstring injury during the game – but that is neither an excuse nor an explanation. These are professionals. Starters, second-stringers, third-stringers. All of them. And they stunk out the joint.

It was all so horrid, it’s hard to know where to start, or rather, stop. This was a Jacksonville team that was playing without its stud first-round pick, running back Leonard Fournette. And the Jags ran for 188 yards. This was a Jacksonville team featuring the eminently ordinary Blake Bortles, whose most productive game was a 242-yard outing against Baltimore. He threw for 288 yards Sunday…in the first half. The Jags, no offensive juggernaut, piled up 518 yards to Indy’s 232. The Jags converted on 8 of 14 third downs to the Colts’ 5 of 15.

Well…you saw it. Or maybe, if you’re lucky, you chose to do yardwork instead.

Somebody mentioned to Pagano that the problems usually come in the second half. He cut the question short.

“It’s on me,’’ he said. “I didn’t have them ready to play. Period.’’

Why didn’t you have them ready to play?

“I don’t know,’’ he said. “I obviously didn’t. There was nothing that we did well.’’

Asked what he thought about the play of the offensive line, Pagano shot the questioner a look of amazement, as if to say, “What the heck do you think I thought of the offensive line?’’ It reminded me of Tommy Lasorda’s famous response when he was asked what he thought of Dave Kingman’s performance after he hit several homeruns against the Dodgers. “What did I think of Kingman’s performance? What the (bleep) do you think I thought of Kingman’s performance?’’

“I would probably say without looking at the film it wasn’t very good,’’ Pagano said. “You credit Jacksonville, right? Ten sacks. You’re not going to do much giving up 10 sacks.’’

This may not be rock bottom – the Colts still have to go to Cincinnati and Houston the next two weeks, then come home to play Pittsburgh – but you can see rock bottom from here.

It’s been my sense that the Colts would let Pagano take the lumps during this rebuilding season, that he would be the sacrificial lamb before being given his walking papers at season’s end. At this point, though, I’m not sure I see the sense in waiting that long. Not that this team is going to pull itself out of this tailspin – the talent isn’t there – but these kinds of performances, these no-shows, are thoroughly unacceptable, especially at home.

Another game, another blowout loss.

Time, finally, to bite the bullet and make the change.