What EXACTLY is Chuck's "specialty" as hc?

[rpeay]

Chuck's Strengths as coach?   ....hmmmmmm......I got nothin'

 

It was supposed to be Defense, after 5 years....the Defense still sucks.  D-line is getting a little better, but LBs and DBs stink.....with the exception of Vontae, who is always hurt......

[Ehrman.Dutton.Cook.Barnes]

Don't you all know by now?  Just listen to his pressers. He cleans things up, he fixes things, he cures hiccups.  So he is either a janitor, a mechanic or a doctor.  He is not a head coach, not in the NFL in any event.

[OHColtfan]

I can't come up with anything that has his stamp on it, something that says the team is this way or does this because he is our coach. Just vanilla, bad defense that doesn't do the fundamentals well. Grigson hasn't exactly helped him any with the incredibly poor job of drafting defensive players, but that is where you are supposed to compensate with scheme, innovative play calling, coaching guys up, etc. Instead we keep doing the same things with the same poor results.

 

It would be nice if he could coach tackling...

[throwing BBZ]

20 hours ago, Myles said:

This.

They are both loved by the players because there is no pressure.   Easy practices.   No butt chewing when you do something wrong.   Lots of poor coaching.  

 
 The guys that like to eat poorly and a lot like him because he is ok with how slow they are. Chuck is soooo Easy!

[lollygagger8]

22 hours ago, 21isSuperman said:

While there is a lot of criticism aimed at Pagano, and some of it is justified, I'm going to try and answer this question seriously.

 

Pagano's specialty is his role in being able to lead.  I don't think he's great at X's and O's, nor is he a great innovator.  But he is able to get guys motivated to play for him.  You can also make a case that he's good at halftime adjustments, seeing as how we tend to have slow starts, but good finishes.  But I think his specialty is being able to get guys motivated to play for him.

 

Good answer! 

 

I just wish whatever adjustments/motivational speeches are being done at half were being done at the beginning of the game to avoid these slow starts. 

[Myles]

14 hours ago, Gavin said:

Herm had no problem jumping on a player or players for not playing well

My mistake, I was mixing up Herm and Marvin Lewis.   Pagano is very much like Marvin.   A well liked coach, but not good at the game day necessities (clock management, play calling, discipline and others).   I think Marvin is the worst coach in the NFL.  

[Coffeedrinker]

Pagano's greatest strength is that he is master of the cliche.  And really for a HC in the NFL, does anything else matter?

[csmopar]

21 hours ago, Bluefire4 said:

We can say whatever we want about the coaching but all they can do is give the players the information they need to go out and win. It comes down to execution. Chuck knew what they had to do this week. The Lions run a dink and dunk offense and you have to limit the yards by making sound tackles and keeping plays in front of the defense. 

 

It is not Chucks fault that professional football players somehow forget that tackling is a part of the game. A few tackles could have really won the game for us.

im not a fan of pagano either but you hit the nail on the head squarely here.  It was pitiful, how many times did we have them wrapped up in the back field only to stop on the play.  

[Myles]

49 minutes ago, Coffeedrinker said:

Pagano's greatest strength is that he is master of the cliche.  And really for a HC in the NFL, does anything else matter?

It is ultimately Chucks job to make sure his players are disciplined in tackling.  

[Coffeedrinker]

2 minutes ago, Myles said:

It is ultimately Chucks job to make sure his players are disciplined in tackling.  

Wow, you quoted my post like it was serious.  That's funny.

[Gavin]

Cheerleader/motivational speaker/Secondary coach

[Yoshinator]

Basically Pagano offers nothing to this team that a below average coach does. The players want to play for him, lol. The defense sure did, all the way up to giving up the most points of any defense in week 1, to the Lions, no less. Luck and the offense are forced to do everything themselves and they can't win while scoring 35. Pagano is completely overmatched, he is basically throwing darts at a board and won't adjust or adapt to a strategy. 

 

You have Andrew Luck, lean on him and lean towards him and the receivers strengths. Slants and screens with Hilton and Dorestt's speed could work wonders. Throw an occasional deep pass in 1 on 1 coverage when you find it. Use 3 WR sets. We shouldn't start slow. The defense is harder to do well with, but he's a defensive guy, he should be able to adapt to their strengths as well. Even our defense shouldn't allow 39 to the Lions. Pagano has this team underperforming every week with the poor starts, and if one side does well, the other stinks. We need to fire him at the end of the year. I won't even mention the playoffs how we can't beat certain teams and how overmatched we are.

[LJpalmbeacher2]

Pagano has No specialty as a HC. I seriously doubt he had one as a DC for that one year in Baltimore at that position. 

[Gavin]

[ÅÐØNϧ 1]

It seems to me his specialty is not learning from his mistakes .

 

He stated if he had it to do over again he would not change a thing , As a HC being oblivious to a game changer like a late time out & prevent defense that allows huge plays in the final seconds of the game is a specialty , a specialty the Colts can't overcome the team was in a position to win & we lose that is a learning experience ignored by the coach his response was stupid .

[ColtsFanMikeC]

On 9/12/2016 at 9:13 AM, bluephantom87 said:

Is he an X's and O's type of guy? Does he develop players or MAXIMIZE talent at hand? Is he good at exploiting other teams' weaknesses? Does his game plan change from week to week depending on opponent or personnel? Is he good at making halftime adjustments? (not counting putting the ball in Luck's hands out of necessity because the team is down 17 pts on a REGULAR basis now) Is he some type of INNOVATOR on the defensive side of the ball? The MAIN thing I hear about Chuck is that the players love him. Ok

 

As I watched the Pats go into Arizona WITHOUT their TOP TWO offensive players (if not in the nfl at their positions), 2 rookie guards, a backup T and missing their star lb along with some front line guys on defense against a SB contender with a top 5 defense and a highly rated offense. I hear the excuses about our secondary yada yada BUT I also saw the d-line get gashed by a team that finished dead last in rushing last year with the SAME players and a very questionable o-line coming in. I saw lbs out of position, POOR tackling, ABSOLUTELY NO pass rush, missed assignments and PRO defense that in general looked unprepared. I don't think hiring ANOTHER 1st timer (dc this time) was the answer simply because he was Chuck's buddy. Greg was released because Chuck said they wanted to be more aggressive on defense YET as a former dc for 1 season with the Ravens Chuck just stood back and watched the vanilla calls? Especially knowing the fact that Manusky had been fired a few of times as dc PRIOR to the Colts for that VERY reason!!

 

Was the Ravens defense good because of Chuck? Did he bring something new as dc for 1 season on a top defense filled with stars on auto pilot. Look at some of the names... Ray Lewis, Suggs, Ed Reed, Haloti Ngata, Bernard Pollard, Redding, Art Jones and Paul Kruger to name a few. I've seen great coaches get the best out of no name defenses by using schemes to highlight whatever talent they have to be at least be solid.  

 

 

Pagano won 33 regular season games and 3 playoff games in his first 3 years as a coach in the NFL.  After inheriting the worst team (by far) in the league and having to more or less completely overhaul the roster.  Then he went 8-8 without his starting QB for >50% of games in year four.

 

Prior to last season, I don't think we had lost back-to-back games in the Pagano era -- so I'd say that is a pretty clear sign that his game plan changes week to week and he does a good job adjusting.  Andrew Luck has 14 4th quarter comeback wins in <3.5 seasons in the league, suggesting Pagano does a solid job adjusting throughout the game (sure it'd be nice to avoid slow starts and not have to rely on comeback wins, but the fact we are getting them consistently suggests the team is making adjustments throughout the game.... had we won last week, I think a lot of people would be praising the Colts for coming back from a 21-3 hole to win in the 4th with the amount of injuries we faced on D). 

 

You can't compare the Pats, arguably the NFL's best/most consistent franchise (with a coach, who IMO, is above and beyond all other coaches).  Garrapalo looked very good....and has been in the Pats system for multiple years (we had what, 3 guys in our secondary who had been with the team for more than 3 weeks and 2 of them got knocked out of the game?) and let's not forget Brady was a 6th round draft pick, who not many people had ever heard of, when he got lucky enough to fill in for Bledsoe and look what he did.

 

13 hours ago, NewColtsFan said:

 

Pagano is the HC because he's a leader of men.      He gets his players to play hard for him.    They don't quit.

 

I realize last season is ancient history for some of you,  but the Colts went 8-8 without having Luck for 9 games.   And they made do with 5 different quarterbacks.      And the roster wasn't all that talented,  so Pagano must've done something right.

 

He may not be a great coach,  but he's a good coach,  and he's proven it every year he's been with the team.

 

 

 

 

 

Exactly!

 

7 hours ago, rpeay said:

Chuck's Strengths as coach?   ....hmmmmmm......I got nothin'

 

It was supposed to be Defense, after 5 years....the Defense still sucks.  D-line is getting a little better, but LBs and DBs stink.....with the exception of Vontae, who is always hurt......

 

Our DBs last game came off the street only a few days before suiting up.... then a rookie who was starting unexpectedly and a FA we signed to address the D after last season got knocked out of the game.  Fact of the matter is, this team needed a complete overhaul and we haven't had the luxury to just come in and replace an awful offense and defense all at once.  We focused early on QB and giving him weapons... we did pretty well with that... we've not done the best to give him a line (is that Pagano's fault? Probably more on Grigson, to be honest).  Our secondary, we got Vontae who has been a stud (and he's not even close to 'always hurt' as you make up in your non-sensical post), then Grigs signed Toler who if you said was 'always hurt' would have been somewhat accurate, Grigs signed Landry who was awful, Mike Adams went from kind of a journeyman to a 2 time all-star since he's been on this team, Darius Butler has (by and large) been a guy who has been good for us in the slot, and then we've had a bunch of other kind of fill in players there... finally we address this the past  2 years with Geathers and Greene (hopefully long term solutions at safety, who are both hurt), and Robinson (who, IMO, looked very good pre-concussion). 

 

Rome wasn't built in a day, my friend.... and if you're going to blame the talent on our team, you should be talking Grigson, not Pagano, he's not the one who signs/drafts/retains players....his job is to do the best with what he's given and so far he's done pretty darn good at it.

 

3 hours ago, Jared Cisneros said:

Basically Pagano offers nothing to this team that a below average coach does. The players want to play for him, lol. The defense sure did, all the way up to giving up the most points of any defense in week 1, to the Lions, no less. Luck and the offense are forced to do everything themselves and they can't win while scoring 35. Pagano is completely overmatched, he is basically throwing darts at a board and won't adjust or adapt to a strategy. 

 

You have Andrew Luck, lean on him and lean towards him and the receivers strengths. Slants and screens with Hilton and Dorestt's speed could work wonders. Throw an occasional deep pass in 1 on 1 coverage when you find it. Use 3 WR sets. We shouldn't start slow. The defense is harder to do well with, but he's a defensive guy, he should be able to adapt to their strengths as well. Even our defense shouldn't allow 39 to the Lions. Pagano has this team underperforming every week with the poor starts, and if one side does well, the other stinks. We need to fire him at the end of the year. I won't even mention the playoffs how we can't beat certain teams and how overmatched we are.

 

Underperforming every week?  Pagano has a .631 winning percentage.... the only current coaches in the NFL (with >1 game) that have higher percentages are Mike Tomlin, Mike McCarthy, Bruce Arians, and Bill Belichek.... what world are you even living on to say that a coach who has not had a losing season in 4 seasons (after inheriting the worst team, 2-14 awful, terrible, joke of a team and after starting a rookie QB and also having a season where his starting QB was hurt for >50% of the year) has us 'underperforming every week'? 

 

We have won 3 games in the playoffs, with a compromised roster compared to other teams (compromised as in, we were 2-14 and have completely overhauled this roster).  We have struggled against New England and Pittsburgh.... guess what? So has pretty much every other team.

 

Also, the Lions offense is no joke... our D didn't play well, but if that happened against Buffalo, Tennessee, Cleveland, etc.. I'd be very worried.... it happened when we were very depleted (with both prior injuries and injuries that occured in game) and when we were facing a legitimate offense. 

[CoachLite]

16 hours ago, NewColtsFan said:

 

Dear God......

 

Yet another thread so ridiculous it makes me want to claw my own eyes out......

 

Sigh.........     

 

That should make the Colts games less frustrating to watch.

[Iancolts]

On September 12, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Valpo2004 said:

 

Outside of RB I think we might be pretty close to having a good offense across the board.  OL looked decent against a good front, we have good WR, solid TE's and a great QB.

 

Defense on the other hand looks really bad on all levels. This next offseason, we need to invest cap space and high draft picks on getting new starters all across the defense. We have maybe 4 or 5 guys worth keeping on as starters.

 

Yeah good luck with that one.  Invest in old FA and draft horrible defense players that's what Grigson is good at!!

[southwest1]

On September 12, 2016 at 10:30 AM, azcolt said:

Chuck's primary strength is convincing Jimmy how good he looks. He starts each day at the Colts complex with, "Jimmy, you look maaaaavelous!"

Bonus points for the comedian Billy Crystal song tie in AZC. 

 

I never understand why owners always pluck DCs from Baltimore: Rex Ryan, Marvin Lewis, Chuck Pagano. 

 

There are other winning franchises like Seattle, AZ, Pittsburgh, Denver. Look a little wider owners. Thank you. 

[Steamboat_Shaun]

On 9/12/2016 at 9:13 AM, bluephantom87 said:

Is he an X's and O's type of guy? Does he develop players or MAXIMIZE talent at hand? Is he good at exploiting other teams' weaknesses? Does his game plan change from week to week depending on opponent or personnel? Is he good at making halftime adjustments? (not counting putting the ball in Luck's hands out of necessity because the team is down 17 pts on a REGULAR basis now) Is he some type of INNOVATOR on the defensive side of the ball? The MAIN thing I hear about Chuck is that the players love him. Ok

 

As I watched the Pats go into Arizona WITHOUT their TOP TWO offensive players (if not in the nfl at their positions), 2 rookie guards, a backup T and missing their star lb along with some front line guys on defense against a SB contender with a top 5 defense and a highly rated offense. I hear the excuses about our secondary yada yada BUT I also saw the d-line get gashed by a team that finished dead last in rushing last year with the SAME players and a very questionable o-line coming in. I saw lbs out of position, POOR tackling, ABSOLUTELY NO pass rush, missed assignments and PRO defense that in general looked unprepared. I don't think hiring ANOTHER 1st timer (dc this time) was the answer simply because he was Chuck's buddy. Greg was released because Chuck said they wanted to be more aggressive on defense YET as a former dc for 1 season with the Ravens Chuck just stood back and watched the vanilla calls? Especially knowing the fact that Manusky had been fired a few of times as dc PRIOR to the Colts for that VERY reason!!

 

Was the Ravens defense good because of Chuck? Did he bring something new as dc for 1 season on a top defense filled with stars on auto pilot. Look at some of the names... Ray Lewis, Suggs, Ed Reed, Haloti Ngata, Bernard Pollard, Redding, Art Jones and Paul Kruger to name a few. I've seen great coaches get the best out of no name defenses by using schemes to highlight whatever talent they have to be at least be solid.  

 

 

He builds monsters.

[ÅÐØNϧ 1]

33 minutes ago, Steamboat_Shaun said:

 

He builds monsters.

 

Maybe on paper .

 

[Mr_486lo]

On Monday, September 12, 2016 at 8:55 PM, BOTT said:

Too much pressure on the defense?  They stunk from the second they took the field.

True, but if your defense is on the field more than your offense is...that's pressure, that's pitiful. Just ridiculous. Defense (players) wins games, not Pagano. If the entire season looks like this, I don't see Pagano or Grigson staying. I'm not being negative, just stating my opinion. 

[Steamboat_Shaun]

3 hours ago, Mr_486lo said:

True, but if your defense is on the field more than your offense is...that's pressure, that's pitiful. Just ridiculous. Defense (players) wins games, not Pagano. If the entire season looks like this, I don't see Pagano or Grigson staying. I'm not being negative, just stating my opinion. 

 

The defense wasn't on the field more than the offense. After the first quarter the offense didn't punt, and they didn't turn the ball over at all. If we weren't missing 5 starters on that side of the ball, I'd definitely expect a different result.

 

As for Pags/Grigs getting canned if the D doesn't improve, I wouldn't disagree, except I'd say Pagano is a little more expendable at this point than Grigson is. Chudzinski could easily slide into the HC role on an interim basis just as Arians did in '12. As for Grigson, I'm not sure how many valuable candidates there are for the GM position that don't already have jobs.

[Smash Mouth]

On September 13, 2016 at 8:51 AM, OHColtfan said:

I can't come up with anything that has his stamp on it, something that says the team is this way or does this because he is our coach. Just vanilla, bad defense that doesn't do the fundamentals well. Grigson hasn't exactly helped him any with the incredibly poor job of drafting defensive players, but that is where you are supposed to compensate with scheme, innovative play calling, coaching guys up, etc. Instead we keep doing the same things with the same poor results.

 

It would be nice if he could coach tackling...

Seems like the best thing this team does is come back in the 2nd half from 1st half deficits.  Our defense used to have a chance with Robert Mathis getting sacks.  We have seen Mathis' demise for the past 2 years and Grigson's responses been poor.

[bluephantom87]

19 hours ago, ColtsFanMikeC said:

 

Prior to last season, I don't think we had lost back-to-back games in the Pagano era -- so I'd say that is a pretty clear sign that his game plan changes week to week and he does a good job adjusting.  Andrew Luck has 14 4th quarter comeback wins in <3.5 seasons in the league, suggesting Pagano does a solid job adjusting throughout the game (sure it'd be nice to avoid slow starts and not have to rely on comeback wins, but the fact we are getting them consistently suggests the team is making adjustments throughout the game.... had we won last week, I think a lot of people would be praising the Colts for coming back from a 21-3 hole to win in the 4th with the amount of injuries we faced on D). 

 

You can't compare the Pats, arguably the NFL's best/most consistent franchise (with a coach, who IMO, is above and beyond all other coaches).  Garrapalo looked very good....and has been in the Pats system for multiple years (we had what, 3 guys in our secondary who had been with the team for more than 3 weeks and 2 of them got knocked out of the game?) and let's not forget Brady was a 6th round draft pick, who not many people had ever heard of, when he got lucky enough to fill in for Bledsoe and look what he did.

 

Underperforming every week?  Pagano has a .631 winning percentage.... the only current coaches in the NFL (with >1 game) that have higher percentages are Mike Tomlin, Mike McCarthy, Bruce Arians, and Bill Belichek.... what world are you even living on to say that a coach who has not had a losing season in 4 seasons (after inheriting the worst team, 2-14 awful, terrible, joke of a team and after starting a rookie QB and also having a season where his starting QB was hurt for >50% of the year) has us 'underperforming every week'? 

 

 

This post was NOT started as some type of meltdown or to BASH Chuck. I REALLY wanted to know what category would you place Chuck under as far as his coaching style. Some have put some real thought into the question while others have made some cleaver posts that made me chuckle BUT to the ones acting like he's one of the BEST in the business based on his record ALONE are slightly blinded.

 

I say again take away Bruce's 9 wins and that needle starts leaning more toward a .500 winning %. Which in itself is not bad BUT if you strive for GREATNESS avg is NOT good enough. Add to the fact that he has benefited from coaching in the DREADFUL afc south. (one of the WORST divisions win % wise in nfl history the last few yrs) Like Caldwell before him used a franchise qb to chalk up wins while MASKING his deficiencies as hc. As I recall Jim even had a 14-2 season.

 

Now on to Chuck I think he is either stubborn to a fault trying to make Gore and the ground game the focal point of this offense to START games thus LEADING to the slow starts or simply a guy willing to play it conservative KNOWING that he has a qb in Luck capable of scoring pts in bunches with the passing game while erasing LARGE deficits. If as some say he is a motivator WHY so many SLOW starts STILL in year 5 under Chuck? As far as defense forget who's on the field they LACK some of the BASIC fundamentals of football like TACKLING and TOUGHNESS. As the afc south has become a lot tougher Chuck's inflated win total will start to DECREASE and his below to avg hc abilities will be confirmed. 

[ColtsFanMikeC]

2 hours ago, bluephantom87 said:

This post was NOT started as some type of meltdown or to BASH Chuck. I REALLY wanted to know what category would you place Chuck under as far as his coaching style. Some have put some real thought into the question while others have made some cleaver posts that made me chuckle BUT to the ones acting like he's one of the BEST in the business based on his record ALONE are slightly blinded.

 

I say again take away Bruce's 9 wins and that needle starts leaning more toward a .500 winning %. Which in itself is not bad BUT if you strive for GREATNESS avg is NOT good enough. Add to the fact that he has benefited from coaching in the DREADFUL afc south. (one of the WORST divisions win % wise in nfl history the last few yrs) Like Caldwell before him used a franchise qb to chalk up wins while MASKING his deficiencies as hc. As I recall Jim even had a 14-2 season.

 

Now on to Chuck I think he is either stubborn to a fault trying to make Gore and the ground game the focal point of this offense to START games thus LEADING to the slow starts or simply a guy willing to play it conservative KNOWING that he has a qb in Luck capable of scoring pts in bunches with the passing game while erasing LARGE deficits. If as some say he is a motivator WHY so many SLOW starts STILL in year 5 under Chuck? As far as defense forget who's on the field they LACK some of the BASIC fundamentals of football like TACKLING and TOUGHNESS. As the afc south has become a lot tougher Chuck's inflated win total will start to DECREASE and his below to avg hc abilities will be confirmed. 

 

While it is true the AFC South is not the best division (though it seems to be rapidly improving), you are ignoring the fact that Pagano inherited an absolute mess of a team from the Polians.  We were, in fact, the worst team in the bad AFC South when Pagano took his job.

 

I don't think we know enough about Pagano being stubborn with the run game, to be honest.  There was a reason why Pep was fired mid-season last year -- he was the one trusted to call offensive plays and maybe Chuck got sick of Pep's philosophy.  I would argue, the best offensive game plan of the entire season came against Denver last week (Chud's first week)... unfortunately, that was the last we saw of Andrew, so I think it'd be very difficult to make any assumptions as to how Chuck and Chud are going to do things.

 

Also, keep in mind Chuck has had to deal with a very crappy (probably NFL worst) o-line for the majority of his time here..... this has been in part due to injury and in part due to severe lack of talent (not coaching, but talent provided to the coaches which was not coachable, or healthy enough, to succeed at the NFL level).  And last week, half of our defensive starters (and some of their backups) weren't in the lineup... hard to expect back-ups or guys that will likely get cut when we're healthy to be excellent tacklers.

 

 

[CoachLite]

On 9/13/2016 at 6:26 AM, Ehrman.Dutton.Cook.Barnes said:

Don't you all know by now?  Just listen to his pressers. He cleans things up, he fixes things, he cures hiccups.  So he is either a janitor, a mechanic or a doctor.  He is not a head coach, not in the NFL in any event.

You know, he is a great, you know, orator. He perspires greatness in the Colt's players.

[coltsfanatic24]

Getting the best out of DB's. 

[rpeay]

clock management and fake punts