INDIANAPOLIS – Chuck Pagano had the contract extension he wanted, but the head coach wasn't done.

Ryan Grigson had already met with Jim Irsay.

Pagano had also sat down with the Colts Owner.

Coach and GM followed up those meetings with a face-to-face sit down, sans Irsay.

Now, Pagano wanted to ask Irsay for a favor.

This journey, Pagano and Grigson's, which had started back in 2012 with the ingredients so scarce, the head coach wanted it to continue together.

"(Chuck) said to me, 'Jim, I want to make sure I'm tied at the hip with Ryan and I want to make sure when we get to the mountain top that Ryan and I are there together because we've been through a lot together and we have a special relationship, a close relationship,'" Irsay said on Monday night, re-telling the final chapter to a season no Colts fans will soon forget.

What arose out of Pagano's final meeting with Irsay on Monday was what the Owner had been striving for in a day that will inevitably shape his franchise for the next handful of seasons.

Pagano's contract, which was set to come up in early February, was being extended four seasons.

Grigson was joining Pagano through the 2019 season, with a three-year extension of his own.

The former rookie head coach and GM were back on the same ground.

"Chuck Pagano is a great man," Grigson said on Monday night.

"We've been through the ringer together, but we're still focused on one goal. We're in the arena together, we're in the fire together, but we're united and we're set out to do a job and that job is to still have our eyes set on championships and together, we're going to set out to do that, and we're going to do that."

Said Pagano on the relationship with Grigson:

"We've been candid," Pagano said.

"We agree to disagree, but at the end of the day, you leave every meeting with a handshake and a hug and you say, 'Okay, look, it's about one thing and one thing only. It's about the team and it's about making decisions that are best for the Horseshoe.' It's not about me. It's not about Ryan. It's not about any one person."

Monday's talks at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center were focused on the vision going forward.

Discussions were honest and certainly necessary with the uncertainty of what potentially lied ahead near the top of the Colts food chain.

After hours of candidness, Pagano and Grigson walked out of the press conference room with a handshake and hug, something they hope to be doing one day under Super Bowl confetti.

"There are going to be times when we are both passionate about what we do because we are trying to win a championship," Grigson said of the dynamic with Pagano.

"Something that Chuck brings to the table every day, even with the season we had this year, is just hope. That's the man he is. It's his experiences and that hope, even through all the different quarterbacks (in 2015), that's something that he presents to the locker room. Never feel like we are dead. We always feel like we got life, and that's something that you can't replicate. That's something that's a gift. Chuck is the guy that can get us to the mountaintop and that's why we are all here today together because that's what we are planning on doing."