Chuck Pagano plans to be back with Colts but hasn’t met with Jim Irsay yet

This afternoon, Colts head coach Chuck Pagano held a press conference like usual on Monday, but this press conference was anything but the usual.

Pagano filibustered for well over ten minutes with his opening statement, which I have to imagine is unofficially the longest opening statement he’s ever had in a press conference. It was a media session filled with a lot of optimistic words, but not with an optimistic tone. Colts PR cut off a question near the end and instead had someone ask a different question, and the whole thing was just entirely strange.

The biggest takeaway from it: Pagano still doesn’t know his future with the team.

That’s right: Pagano said that he has yet to meet with owner Jim Irsay and that the meeting will come later in the day today like they do after every season. But he did say “that’s the plan” when asked if he expects to be back, and he said that he has no reason to doubt that he’ll be back. When asked if that’s because he knows something we don’t, Pagano said, “I just look at things and it’s always half full. Yeah, I don’t have any reason to believe why I would be.”

Pagano’s words indicated that he plans to be back, and he kept talking about how they need to be better - but it didn’t sound optimistic. Again, it was just a strange situation.

He was also asked whether he’s prepared to ‘fight like hell’ for his job again this year like he was last year, and Pagano talked a little bit about his coming meeting with Jim Irsay. “Yeah, I think just like everybody else wants answers, the fans, my kids, my wife, the owner,” Pagano said, “I mean, yeah, we’re going to have a discussion on where we’re at, what do we need to do, where we’re going, and how we’re going to get there. We understand where we want to go. And so yeah, we’ll have that conversation.”

So in short: Pagano expects to be back with the Colts, but he hasn’t yet met with Jim Irsay. That seems backwards to me (meet with the coach first, then send him in front of the media), but I guess that shouldn’t be surprising for this franchise nowadays.