Insider: Colts believe because of coach Chuck Pagano

ATLANTA – He closes team meetings with stories about boxers rallying for a 15th-round knockout, or about Roberto Clemente ignoring his third base coach and darting for home.

He’s stood and taken the bullets (there have been plenty) each time his team has stumbled this season (which has been often). He’s faced an onslaught of criticism, reports of a rift with his boss, rumors he wouldn’t survive the bye week, let alone the offseason. His star quarterback’s gone down. Twice. He’s blown up his offensive line. He’s fired his offensive coordinator.

He’s leaning on a 40-year-old quarterback, a 32-year-old running back, a 42-year-old kicker.

And Chuck Pagano is still here.

And the Indianapolis Colts are still winning.

“Two 40-year-olds coming through!” he shouted in the jubilant locker room afterwards. “We will have bingo night on Thursday!”

He’s the coach who wouldn’t let his team crumble, no matter the avalanche that threatened to overwhelm it during this turbulent and trying season. In Sunday’s 24-21 victory over the Atlanta Falcons at the Georgia Dome was everything Pagano preaches, all those tired clichés cobbled together and thrown into three hours of sloppy yet spirited football.

Don’t judge? The Colts were down 14 twice.

“They gave us their best shot!” Pagano told his team on the sidelines. “And we’re still in this thing."

Stick to the process? The defense couldn’t touch Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan for three quarters. They kept coming. And coming. And coming. In the fourth, they buried him.

Keep chopping wood? Indy’s offense, steadied by that 40-year-old quarterback, Matt Hasselbeck, gutted out a nine-play, 56-yard drive late in the fourth quarter to earn that 42-year-old kicker, Adam Vinatieri, a 43-yard kick to win it.

Money. Ballgame. Forget style points in the NFL, the Colts will take wins anyway they can get ‘em. They’re 5-5, still in a tie for first place in the AFC South, still treading water until The Franchise returns from injury, still with a shot to get on a roll before the playoffs.

They still believe.

And they believe because of Pagano.

All those platitudes he spouts off to his players, day after day, week after week? This win validated all of them. This win was Chuck Pagano football.

“We didn’t want to come in here and say, ‘If I had just done this, if I had done that, if I had thrown just one more left hook, we could have won this football game,'” Pagano said afterwards. “We left it all out on the field.”

They had to. Otherwise they’d be 4-6 and in second place in the division. Otherwise, they'd have fallen apart weeks ago. Critics have piled on Pagano this season, with plenty of ammunition. The slow starts. The defensive inconsistencies. The fake punt.

But say this much for Pagano: He's 3-0 without Andrew Luck. How costly can the loss of a starting quarterback be to a franchise? Just ask the Dallas Cowboys. They lost seven straight after Tony Romo went down.

With Luck out, a lesser-minded group would’ve thrown in the towel. Pagano wouldn’t let them. What Sunday’s win told us was this: This team, warts and all, won’t die. The Colts are playing for this coach as long as he’s here. They’ve bought in.

Gritty wins like this prove it.

“We know he's got our back,” linebacker Erik Walden said. “He’s always going to do what’s best for us. The least we can do is come out and perform and hold everything together when it was looking like a debacle.”

A debacle? No more. They’ve steadied the midseason storm. They lost three straight, then answered with two straight wins. Luck went down, so Hasselbeck went 23-for-32 for 213 yards and two touchdowns. The defense was getting gashed by Falcons wideout Julio Jones, so it stiffened in the fourth quarter and yielded just 51 total yards and no points.

Sloppy. Spirited. Never-say-die. Pagano football.

“When you have a group of guys who like each other, and who like the coaches, you have good chemistry,” said punter Pat McAfee. “That’s a real thing. We don’t want to let each other down. You want to play for your coach, and your teammates. That’s the most powerful thing in team sports.”

“Every team I have been a part of has said that, but it’s pretty real here,” said Hasselbeck. “We just keep scratching and clawing and doing what we can … it’s hard. (The early-season struggles are) not how we envisioned this year going.”

No. Not quite. But they’ve survived those early stumbles because they've stuck together and because they’ve stuck behind a coach who refused to let his team crumble.

Some teams waver when the going gets tough, when the coach's job is on the line and the star quarterback's sidelined.

And some rally from 14-point deficits, on the road, and win by three.

“Ugly win,” I mentioned to Luck, who was exiting the locker room after his coach's postgame speech.

“Doesn’t (bleeping) matter,” he said, smiling.

He's right. Chuck Pagano would be proud.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.

Bucs at Colts, 1 p.m. Sunday, Fox