Column: John Pagano trying to keep Chargers’ defense on the right track

Watching his 13-year-old son play a video game, John Pagano felt a call of duty.

“I’m laying on the couch one night and my son’s playing Madden online against somebody,” recalled Pagano, defensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers. “I said, ‘You’ve got tendencies right now. You keep running the same thing over and over. He’s going to figure it out.’”

The coaching couch was typical of Pagano, whose work is never done. Heading into Week 4 of the NFL season, he’s trying to push the right buttons on a Chargers defense that has played well so far but now has to cope with the loss of starting linebackers Melvin Ingram (hip), a key component to the pass rush, and Manti Te’o (broken foot), the team’s leading tackler.

“I’m all about, whoever has a helmet, you’re going to have an opportunity to do something,” Pagano said. “It holds every player accountable.”

So far, Pagano and his defensive coaches have done a masterful job of shuffling the deck. In San Diego’s best defensive performance of the season, against the Seattle Seahawks, the Chargers were without starting cornerback Brandon Flowers and brick-wall linebacker Jarret Johnson. Still, Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch was limited to 36 yards in six carries, after trampling Green Bay for 110 yards and two touchdowns in the opener.

The Chargers were slightly less impressive on defense in Sunday’s 22-10 victory at Buffalo, yet they had their highlights, among them defensive end Corey Liuget being named AFC defensiveplayer of the week with six tackles, a sack and a forced fumble.

“We’re playing better than even how we finished last year,” said Pagano, whose team catches a break Sunday with a home game against winless Jacksonville. “At the beginning of the year, we had so many guys coming in new. They had to learn to play together, and they have.”

Pagano, 47, is the younger brother of Indianapolis Colts Coach Chuck Pagano. Their father, Sam, won three Colorado state championships in his 21 years as head coach at Fairview High in Boulder. So football is in their blood.

That’s not to suggest John took the paved road to his current job, which he has held since 2012. Instead, he has paid his dues. He’s the Chargers’ longest-tenured assistant (14th season), having worked his way up from quality control defensive assistant, to assistant linebackers coach, to linebackers coach, to defensive coordinator two years ago.

“Moving up like that is going to come with some doubt,” Johnson said. “Because people are not going to change their image of you. So if you’re quality control, you’re always quality control. Then all a sudden, [skeptically] ‘Aw, he got the position job? Oh, really? Wow, we’ll see how he’s going to do.’ And all of a sudden he’s a good position coach.

“When a guy moves up, it always comes with a little bit of skepticism. Then, when he proves them wrong, which [Pagano] has done, it comes with even more respect rather than somebody who’s just kind of taken the job from the outside.”

Pagano, a former all-state linebacker at Fairview, worked all sorts of football jobs before getting to the NFL, including carrying the headset cable for the elder Jim Mora — a family friend and then head coach in New Orleans — whenever the Saints played the Broncos in Colorado.

As a young kid at Fairview, Pagano was a ball boy who idolized his big brother, Chuck — six years his senior, and a standout safety and receiver who went on to play at Wyoming before getting into coaching.

“It’s just an honor to be his brother,” said John, who played four years as college linebacker at Mesa in Grand Junction, Colo.

Both Pagano brothers are all about football, though their styles differ.

“Chuck’s more intense,” their father said. “He’s ready to get it going. John’s the guy who coaches with his passion and his relationships with the guys.”

For instance?

“One time I was lined up on the sidelines, nervous,” Sam Pagano recalled. “We were getting ready to kick it off, and I look down the sidelines and John’s sitting with the cheerleaders eating a pizza. I was really nervous, about to throw up, and he’s got a big smile. He must have been 10 or 11, he’s got a slice of pizza, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, he’s really into this game.’”

Maybe the most amusing job John had, especially in the retelling, was as an “unofficial” official for games at Fairview.

As a ball boy, he would stand behind the goal posts during games and run down the football after field-goal attempts. That spot gave him an ideal vantage on whether the kicks were good. So he would signal to the crowd before the officials did, something that became tradition at the school.

Rusty Schaffer, the play-by-play man for the local radio station, KBOL, used to say: “Johnny Pagano with the call. Let’s see what he says.”

Said Pagano: “The officials probably didn’t like me too much for that.”

These days, there’s a lot more riding on Pagano’s calls. And he has some creative ways of achieving his goals. In Week 2 of last season — when the Chargers were underdogs in Philadelphia and facing a Chip Kelly offense that had the NFL abuzz — Pagano and his staff worked with Coach Mike McCoy on ways to prepare the defense for the faster tempo.

Instead of having his players watch the scout offense break the huddle and create its formation, Pagano had the defense face him, backs turned to the line of scrimmage, until the last possible moment. Then, just before the ball was snapped, he’d say, “Go!” and his players would turn around and make defensive adjustments on the fly.

The game wasn’t a defensive masterpiece. The Eagles still rolled up 511 yards. But San Diego, a 7 1/2 -point underdog, came away with a 33-30 victory.

The Chargers are a work in progress on defense, and no one’s going to confuse them with, say, last season’s Seahawks. But San Diego has improved in the secondary with the addition of corners Flowers and rookie Jason Verrett, and has a ramped-up pass rush now that Dwight Freeney is healthy.

As for Pagano, there’s early talk of him as a potential head-coaching candidate, murmurs he politely brushes aside.

“I guess every coach in the profession always looks to do that,” he said. “Seeing my father do that, seeing my brother. If the opportunity presents itself, you always hope. But whether it happens or not, it’s not going to truly define me as a coach.”

That definition is under construction now.