CINCINNATI — Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Hue Jackson may not have expected what happened Sunday in Indianapolis when his unit produced a mere 135 yards and no points in a 27-0 loss, but there were no surprises Monday afternoon.

“I knew you guys would be coming to see me,” Jackson said when a group of reporters knocked on his office door.

Jackson spent the next 20 minutes absorbing the blame for everything that happened the day before when his offense, which entered the weekend ranked No. 5 in the NFL, posted some historically low numbers.

“At the end of the day I have to go back and take a good look at me,” Jackson said. “Make sure you’re giving the players a chance to have success. Obviously I didn’t do a good enough job. We didn’t score any points. Not ‘enough,’ we didn’t score ‘any’ points. They won in every facet of the game against us. That’s not us. It’s not who we are. It’s not who we’ve become. It’s my job that I make sure that I get that squared away with our offensive unit.”

The Bengals didn’t get a first down until late in the second quarter and didn’t cross midfield until their next-to-last possession. They were 1-for-13 on third down and had just 47 yards on 38 plays through three quarters.

Their final tally of 135 yards marked the ninth-lowest total in franchise history, as did the 32 rushing yards which came on only 12 attempts.

“I’d be the first to tell you I think I’ve got to call it more,” Jackson said of the run. “Sometimes you just have to be stubborn enough to do it. You’ve got to give guys an opportunity.”

Jackson even took the heat for a Cincinnati defense that surrendered 506 yards against the league’s No. 1-ranked offense.

“I looked from where I was, and I was pissed,” he said. “I was pissed for our defense because we left them out there quite a bit. We were three-and-out I don’t know how many times. It seemed like every time you turned around, it was three-and-out and here comes the defense back out there. That’s not how you play as a team. Our job is to protect them and their job is to protect us and we both try to protect special teams. So we didn’t do our part yesterday and we understand that.”

The yardage allowed to yardage gained differential of 371 yards was the third largest in team history (456 in a 34-0 loss to Oakland in 1968 and 376 in a 37-3 defeat at Kansas City in the season finale in 2005 when head coach Marvin Lewis rested his starters).

But as disappointed and angry as Jackson is with the performance, he is urging calm and commitment moving forward.

“It’s not the time for panic,” he said “It’s not time for anybody to jump off the reservation. We’ve got some work to do. A lot of it is attitude. It’s mindset, it’s determination, it’s will. It’s your foundational belief. I’m sure if you talk to any one of players, they’ll say they never thought that was coming. They didn’t see that happening. I didn’t, either. But it did. So what are you going to do about it now?

“We’ve got to look at it for what it is, understand it, have it not happen again and understand that we have a huge game coming up this week against Baltimore.”

REPORT CARD VS. COLTS

PASSING OFFENSE: F — The receivers weren’t open, the quarterback wasn’t accurate and the offensive line struggled to block. Other than that, things were fine.

RUSHING OFFENSE: F — Twelve carries for 32 yards pretty much says it all. The Bengals had to abandon the run in the second half when the deficit started mounting, but in the first half when the score was a manageable 10-0, they rushed eight times for 12 yards.

PASS DEFENSE: D — Andrew Luck is as good as there is in the league, but this defense has proven in the past it can shut down the best of the best. Five Indianapolis receivers had catches of at least 20 yards.

RUSH DEFENSE: D — With so much attention focused on stopping Luck and the league’s No. 1-ranked passing game, it was expected the Bengals might have to sacrifice a little against the run. But 171 yards are more than a little.

SPECIAL TEAMS: B — Punter Kevin Huber was tremendous, averaging 50.7 yards per boot, including a season-long 63-yarder. The coverage team also played well, as only two of Huber’s franchise record-tying 11 punts were returned, and they went for an average of 6.5 yards.

COACHING: D-minus – The Bengals were without their best offensive player, A.J. Green, for a second consecutive game and their best defensive player, Vontaze Burfict, left early yet again, something that is bound to hamstring a coaching staff. But the Colts looked as though they knew every play call, and whatever adjustments the Bengals may have attempted certainly didn’t work.