One of the unusual early developments of the offseason wasn’t a firing, but a pair of non-firings.
When the Colts decided to hang onto both coach Chuck Pagano and General Manager Ryan Grigson, there was a long-held belief that it was strange because the two didn’t get along.
That existed because of multiple reports through the course of a lost season that the two were at odds, and Pagano (the one who had to hold daily press conferences) never exactly denied it.
But in an effort to put the pork chop back into the pig, Grigson told Michael Silver of NFL Media that the two had a solid professional working relationship, and the reports of animosity were overblown.
“I don’t think I’m a monster,” Grigson said. “I might not be going out for beers with the head coach every night, but I do like Chuck [Pagano], and we have a lot of fun working together. We bounce things off each other. We laugh, all the time. I just don’t understand why people think I hate the guy, because that’s just not reality.”
Tension between co-workers is natural when a team underperforms, and the Colts underperformed mightily last year. The reasons for that fall largely on injuries to quarterback Andrew Luck. But there were plenty of other reasons that fall to both Pagano and Grigson, from weird fake punts to the inability to draft and sign players who were able to protect Luck from beatings.
But now that the two are back, together, they’ll have a chance to work on their relationship as well as their roster.