Chuck Pagano made the league’s biggest coaching mistake during Week 1

The Indianapolis Colts walked into Los Angeles on Sunday and got blown off the field by the Rams, 46-9. We knew this team would be in trouble without Andrew Luck, but it’s stunning just how thoroughly they got outplayed.

They gave up a 40-burger to a Rams team that reached the 30-point mark just one time last year. Quarterback Scott Tolzien was even worse than expected, throwing two pick-sixes (and almost a third) before getting yanked for Jacoby Brissett in the third quarter.

It was an embarrassing performance from top to bottom, putting even more heat on head coach Chuck Pagano.

Pagano certainly didn’t help things with the biggest coaching mistake of the week. Halfway through the first quarter, with the Colts down 10-0 but not out of it yet, Tolzien hit Marlon Mack for a 21-yard catch-and-run. He was ruled out at the 1-yard line, but as the replay shows, Mack sure looked like he scored a touchdown.

His right foot just barely stayed in bounds, and Mack extended the ball enough to break the plane. It’s a close call, but nothing the refs couldn’t figure out on review. If there’s enough convincing evidence to overturn the call, you’d challenge it, right?

Not if you’re Chuck Pagano, apparently.

Instead of waiting for replay to make the rounds, he hurried his team up to the line of scrimmage, presumably trying to catch the defense off guard. Despite having first-and-goal at the 1-yard line, the Colts never came close to converting and had to settle for a field goal. A scoreline that should’ve been 10-7 was now 10-3, with the Colts blowing their best chance to get back into the game. The Rams went on to score 27 unanswered points.

For his part, Pagano owned up to the gaffe:

Stampede Blue blasted the move, calling it a new low in Pagano’s Colts tenure.

Days like this won’t do much good for Pagano’s job security. This game was a new low for a coach who has made a habit of making embarrassing mistakes. If you want to say the reason the Colts got destroyed was because of Andrew Luck not playing, I would agree with that, but I’d also remind you that it was a certain coach who played him in a meaningless Week 17 game when Luck was already injured/hurt. Bad coaching decisions almost always come back to haunt teams.

The Colts are very bad without Andrew Luck, but they aren’t 37 points worse than the Los Angeles Rams. If you have to point fingers at anybody, start with the head coach, who has overstayed his welcome in Indianapolis.

Things will probably get worse before they get better. Luck has already been ruled out for Week 2, and who knows when he’ll be back on the field. The quarterback situation went from a question mark to a full-blown crisis, and it’s startling that the Colts didn’t try harder to find an upgrade on Tolzien when they knew Luck would potentially miss games.

Brissett might legitimately be their best option, and they traded for him just over a week ago. They better hope he picks up the playbook soon, because there’s no way they can keep trotting out Tolzien. It’s hard to imagine this team still being in contention by the time Luck is ready to return.

General manager Chris Ballard will have his hands full trying to clean up the mess Ryan Grigson left behind, but Pagano hasn’t made things easier with his penchant for baffling in-game mistakes. If this is his last year in Indy, it’s a sour note to leave on after his inspiring victory over leukemia five years ago.

So that was the worst coaching move of Week 1, but it wasn’t the only bad one. Let’s check out some other blunders from the first weekend of NFL football.

The Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks were scoreless heading into the last seconds of the second quarter. Seattle ran some conservative runs to kill the clock and head to the locker room, but for some reason Mike McCarthy used two timeouts, giving them enough time to move into field goal range and go into halftime up, 3-0.

This didn’t mean much in the long run — the Packers eventually ran out to a comfortable 17-9 win — but calling timeouts for the opposing team is not an ideal strategy.

Nobody expects the New York Jets to be good this year, but they were still hanging in there against the Buffalo Bills, down by eight points with four minutes left. Yet, with a fourth-and-8 on their own 44-yard line, Bowles elected to punt the ball and trust his defense to make a quick stop. It didn’t work out, of course: The Bills got a first down and salted the game away.

Fourth-and-8 is admittedly a long shot, but when you’re the Jets and everybody is already writing you off, why not try to surprise people a bit? Punting there is a classic “play not to lose” move that doesn’t actually help you win.

Imagine having Drew Brees and a revamped running attack, playing in a dome, and settling for field goals while ultimately losing by 10 points.

It didn’t help that the Saints defense was trash, but we’re used to that by now. Sam Bradford throws for 346 yards and a 143.0 QB Rating? Sure, why not. What’s really concerning is how limp the offense looked for most of the night. Adrian Peterson, Mark Ingram, and Alvin Kamara combined for 53 yards on 19 carries. But New Orleans should be able to overcome that because — I’d like to emphasize — the Saints have Drew Brees. Kicking a 24-yard field goal down 19-6, and then a 20-yarder down 26-9, was essentially Payton conceding defeat on the road.

Now that Jeff Fisher is gone, Sean Payton is the new King of 7-9 Style, with his team reaching that mark in three straight years. Will he make it four in a row? He’s certainly on the right track.