Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -1/03- Absent Irsay, Pagano Cliche's & More Strange Colts' Press Conferences

Episode Date: January 3, 2017

As the Indianapolis #Colts fan base waited with baited breath on Black Monday, no significant news popped up out of the year end press conference from coach Chuck #Pagano. Where is owner Jim Irsay? Ryan Grigson? Why are the Colts PR staff nixing questions? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Talkspace.com slash BOOM. B-O-O-M. No, I'm not for sale. You are Locked On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back to Locked On Colts, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Matt Dainley, and thank you for joining me here on a Tuesday, January 3rd. And if you guys were like just about anybody who's interested in the Colts in any way

shape or form you guys were kind of waiting on pins and needles waiting for the Chuck Pagano press conference and I tried to kind of warn some people you know that this is a typical that kind of doubled as a Monday presser for the head coach which happens after every game and the year-end presser which also happens at the end of the year obviously every single year so there wasn't a lot at the moment as far as I was concerned to get all wound up about Pagano was going to speak and he was going to kind of give his you know spiel or whatever you know something we've heard hundreds and hundreds of times this year already nothing to really uh you know get too bent out of shape about. I mean,

because everybody was looking for a change or looking for a major press conference, I think today, I think that's why everybody got a little, you know, excited about it. But, you know, as of now, there's no changes happening at the moment. Pagano stated that he hasn't spoken to Ursae today which you know doesn't really make any sense to me that he hadn't spoken to him yesterday before the press conference and it also you know there was some crazy weird issues during the press conference there and if you I mean I'm not sure how other teams are about their press conferences, how they approach them or go about them. But the Colts have almost always, as far as I can tell, been very tight-lipped.

So I'm not even sure what word I'm looking for. Very tight-knit about their press conferences, who they allow in, so on and so forth. I mean, very closed doors. That's not a word, but that's the best way I can explain it. You know, there was a part at the end of their press conference there with Pagano where Mike Wells out of ESPN was trying to get a question asked, and Avis, the PR guy for the Colts, cut him off. And that's a little strange. That's a little different from the past.

But when it gets kind of like this, you kind of expect them to put some limitations on there. And it could have been that Avis the the Avis's are had already put you know a time constraint on questions you know or something of the sort I don't know I was not there personally so I can't say that but typically the press conferences that I have been to of the Colts that's typically what Avis will do he will put you know hey got such and such time or you know just whatever and uh you know when it's up it's up Avis is pretty uh pretty cut and dry about it you know when things uh start to get stagnant or their questions start to get you know a little soft or whatever you want to call it uh he'll cut it off but he also

has kind of a a hard line as far as you know that's last last question and whatever. But Mike Wells didn't seem too upset or didn't seem too happy about it. I can't blame him when he's trying to ask an honest question about the future of Pagano and things like that. Basically, he's just interrupted and not allowed to ask the question. That's a little different, and it's a little strange. It's strange. I really don't know what's going to happen um i think we could all probably put the the payton rumors aside for now whether or not that turns out to be the case as far as that goes the first line of business is figuring out whether pagano and grigson are going to stay or not

they're certainly not going to be a hire for either of those positions until there's a firing or if there is a firing. So A comes before B, put your socks on before your shoes, and that's the way it goes in the NFL as well. It was kind of interesting. I thought that we basically got, oh oh i don't know 20 30 minutes of pagano dropping about every cliche or you know i think he's happy to be uh done with the year i think that this season where war on him quite a bit um and you know the colts fans are pretty

relentless so i mean a lot of you out there that listen to this, you know, you're either laid back and you still want Pagano fired or Grixen fired or one of the two or you're one of the outspoken ones and you make it known as often as possible on social media or otherwise. So, either way, there's a thought that's been going through my head since earlier yesterday. And, you know, there's these coaches that's been going through my head since earlier yesterday. There's these coaches that we keep talking about, Shanahan, McDaniels.

Those seem to be the two top offensive guys. Vance Johnson's been brought up. He's a guy who's been a Wade Phillips disciple. Wade Phillips with the Denver opening has been rumored, but Wade Phillips isn't a good head coach. He's been rumored but wade phillips isn't a good head coach he's a hell of a defensive coordinator but he's not a good head coach he's not getting a head coach job anywhere so um but he'll i think that the denver broncos would be crazy to let him go that's for sure uh with the uh kubiak decision so and you know that's

the thing there's only what, maybe five, uh, candidates that you would consider top level guys or even, uh, high, I don't even know what to call it other than just guys that have been getting a lot of attention and are being courted more or less for these jobs. But there's, you know, the openings now are just growing by the day, and the Colts aren't one of them. So if there's anything, I mean, look, the Bills, the Broncos, the Jaguars, the Rams, the Chargers, and the Niners all let go of their coaches. A couple let go of GMs. So a couple let go of, you know, GMs and so on. But the thing about this is,

is that you're going to have probably maybe another one or two teams that let go of a coach, maybe not. But in this case, there's only so many coaching candidates, their quality, that you would want to bring in to take that next step with them and hire them. After that, Pagano's better than the field. I mean, we don't have to like him. I mean, as a coach, you don't have to think he's a good coach, but it doesn't make sense for Ursae to fire Pagano when the five candidates that are quality at this time of year are going to be taken. I mean, Shanahan's being courted by everybody. McDaniels is going to be getting courted by everybody.

And after that, it's really – there's other teams here that don't have head coaches. They're going to have to take a stab at somebody. So it's one of those things where the Colts, Jim Mercer is not a guy that's just going to go throw a knife in the dark. He's a guy who, if he doesn't get his guy, he's going to stand pat. So this is one of those things. If he doesn't have a guy in mind, lined up, ready to say yes when the hat drops, then Pagano's going to stay.

That doesn't give any security to Grigson's job or anything like that at all. But the thing is when you do already, if you've established that a certain guy's going to be your coach, sometimes if you bring in a GM and those two don't get along, kind of like Grigson and Pagano didn't the first few years or just still don't, whatever, you know, we just don't know. But if they bring a new guy in and that doesn't work any better, then there's decision time again. Is this not the right GM or do I just let Pagano go and let this guy hire his own coach? That's typically the way it goes.

When you bring in a GM, you bring in a GM, that GM a GM that GM brings in his coach so um you know you just don't know I mean but you know I don't want him to fire Pagano if he's just going to go out and get Dave Moody defensive coordinator of the Iowa State Cyclones or something like that you know um just to get another coach in here to appease a fan base that can't stand Pagano. That doesn't make any sense at all. There will be more coaching vacancies next year. There will be more coaches that are, you know, there will be a hot coordinator next year.

There will be another hot defensive coordinator next year. There will be a hot just whatever. I mean, those guys, it happens every single year. The cycle continues no matter what. You know, as far as I'm concerned, if Ursae doesn't think that he's going to nail one of these top couple guys, he's not going to fire Pagano. That doesn't make sense to, as much as it doesn't make sense to keep him, it doesn't make sense to let him go for, you know, the unknown or some guy who's never proven that he could do much of anything that's

basically what 2012 was for for uh ursa hiring pagano in the first place now on the other hand um you know the colts have had such a bad year that you see grigson and pagano uh and ursa and everybody's a well aware of what's happened and how this team's played and functioned and their preparedness and everything. And yet Monday almost seemed like it took Ursae by surprise. You know what I mean? I thought it was kind of strange that – I don't know.

I saw a couple tweets on it afterwards. I got on there, you know, I'd been thinking about it. And then I saw that it wasn't just me. That's for sure. Plenty of other people thought, you know, how he just come into a situation where it's like, oh, it's Black Monday. What am I going to do? Am I going to fire him? Keep him? I don't know. I'm going to go out to eat and we we'll talk about it in a couple weeks. I don't know. There's something up with that.

I don't really understand. He's just completely made up his mind. Look, it's over. Pagano's sticking around. I'm not getting rid of either one of these guys. So we really don't know. That's why they call rumors rumors as far as Manning and all that stuff go. Look, Manning, from what I've heard, was in town.

His agent was in town. But that doesn't necessarily mean what we may think that it means. There's a lot of speculation when stuff like that happens, and it doesn't always come true. So whatever you want to call it and whatever you have a thought process of about the situation, you're probably validated in whichever side you want to hang out on. At the same time, Ursae's running a multimillion-dollar organization,

and he's not just going to fire a guy just to go hire some random coach just because people are tired of Pagano. So think about that side of it too. That's not necessarily an endorsement from Irsay towards Pagano or Grigson. However, he knows what he's getting out of Pagano. He knows that people love him in that building. That locker room does love him regardless of what we as fans think of his coaching ability he's going to draw people in uh as far as uh players because people love to play for him but is he going to draw in the players that we really want i don't know that's you know that's kind of the the the mentality that's the thing that keeps us thinking that really you know yeah we're going to have guys

come in a free agency. We're definitely going to draft people. But who are these guys going to be? Are these going to be the guys that Pagano really wants that don't pan out? Is it going to be the senseless moves of Grigson that don't pan out? Or are they both going to turn things around eventually? You know, one of those things I was talking to you guys about yesterday. You just never know. Maybe six years is the charm. You never know. So there's a lot to be

left unknown that we just don't, we can't figure out quite yet. And, you know, I would say by the end of the week, we'll have a pretty good picture of it. I don't think that I was ever thinking that we would definitely hear something today about the future of Pagano and or Grigson. I definitely think it was possible. However, I don't think Ursae's in a hurry. And with all these guys chucking their coaches out and only a handful of good quality coaching candidates out there, I would be inclined to say that Ursae says, screw it, we're keeping who we've got. And, you know, none of these guys are worth sending our team in the dumps off of a whim. So you just never know. Like I said, three years of 11 and five, two, eight and eight seasons. And, you know, that can make a owner

really think maybe that was just a couple of bad years you know one without luck one with luck uh we got to get the rest of the thing shored up and maybe that's kind of what he thinks you know look we screwed up and i would assume last year that that's the kind of conversation that they had look we pissed away the first few years here in the draft and in free agency for the most part uh to an extent at least, with some of the contracts and some of the talent that they brought in. The lack of talent, I guess, would be more accurate. And, you know, now they're trying to rebuild it. And maybe, you know, Ursae has given them that latitude to rebuild it,

given them some time to do it. We'll have to see. It's interesting, but, you know, like I said, I think within a week, we'll know for sure. There will be still rumors going around. We may even hear from Ursae a couple times. But more openings keep coming. And if the coaches start getting hired, then it's going to be over pretty quick.

Well, guys, this is going to be it for our Tuesday on Locked on Colts. Thank you for listening. As always, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and any place you guys hear this podcast. Check it out on Twitter at LockedOnColts. Hit me up on the email at LockedOnColtsPod at gmail.com. You can get me on Twitter at mdanley__nfl. And, you know, hit me up.

You guys have been fantastic, and it's the off season now uh we're gonna try to keep our content as fresh as possible uh we've got a pretty good lineup here in the next few weeks so uh we'll see what we're gonna put together and uh we'll put some stuff out here for you guys that i think you're gonna really like and really enjoy some good voices that are gonna give us us either some positive reviews as far as what we can expect or some negative. So it's going to be interesting offseason here for the Colts. So thank you guys for joining me. Come back every day and I'll check you all out on Wednesday right here on Locked on Colts. You are Locked on Colts, your daily podcast on the

Indianapolis Colts, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.