INDIANAPOLIS — Ever since Tony Dungy became Indianapolis Colts coach in 2002, there has been a mentality in the team’s locker room not to allow one loss to effect what happens the next week.

That thought process carried over to Jim Caldwell’s time as Colts coach and has continued under current coach Chuck Pagano.

With that in mind, what’s it going to take for Indianapolis to put last week’s embarrassing 51-34 road loss to Pittsburgh in the rear-view mirror? Getting ready for Monday night’s nationally televised road game with the New York Giants would be a good place to start.

“(The Colts players) have to and they’ve done it so many times before,” Pagano said. “So I have faith and trust because of history that they will be able to move on. And we have to move on. We always talk about staying steady, sticking to the process, keeping on the highway, so to speak.

“Never too high, never too low. Just like a great win, you can’t let a loss like this linger. You can’t have a hangover. There’s a team sitting and waiting and licking its chops in New York right now who’s going to be well-rested. They’re well-coached. They’re a really good football team and a great organization and we all know that.

“They had a week off, so they’ve had two weeks to prepare for us. So we better not (worry about the Pittsburgh game). Because if we do, then we’re going to be barking up the wrong tree.”

As good as Indianapolis has been during the last two seasons, both years were marked with uncharacteristic losses. Losing to the Steelers last week was another prime example of what can happen if the Colts don’t bring their “A” game each week.

Pagano knows the template for a bad loss.

“No pressure on the quarterback, give up big plays, poor communication,” he said. “We had breakdowns, especially in the back end. When you let receivers run free and go uncovered, there’s a lot of things I can point out that lead to why things happen the way they happened. You don’t play good situational football, you don’t convert on third down, you can’t get off the field on third down.

“You line up on special teams to block a field goal and they get you to jump and you give them a fresh set of downs and then it costs you a touchdown. It’s bad football. It’s not intentional. But it’s bad football and you’re not going to win games playing like that. Our guys know that, our staff knows that. We haven’t done that of late, so we’ll go to work to fix that.”

Indianapolis has been successful this year by being opportunistic and by controlling the clock.

“The script got flipped on us,” Pagano said. “They did to us what we’ve been doing to other teams. So all those things that we did well in those three wins in October, they did all those things to us. You guys know all the stats; we know all the stats, so I’m not going to get into all of them. But that’s a recipe for disaster.”

So eight games into the 2014 season, where are the Colts? How is the team progressing?

“We’re one game up in our division. We’re 5-3. And we’ve got a big game coming up against the Giants on Monday Night Football that we’re all excited for and probably can’t get to fast enough so we can get this taste out of our mouth,” Pagano said.

NOTES: The Colts signed WR Chandler Jones to the practice squad and released RB Jeff Demps from the practice squad. … WR Reggie Wayne (elbow) and RB Trent Richardson are expected to return to action against the Giants after missing the Pittsburgh game. … OLB Erik Walden (hip pointer) is not expected to play and would be replaced by Andy Studebaker. … CB Vantae Davis (knee) might be available to start.