{"id":1466,"date":"2011-02-03T11:07:12","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T15:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2011-02-03T11:07:59","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T15:07:59","slug":"wait-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=1466","title":{"rendered":"Wait…Who?!?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t even know how to express an opinion on this one.<\/p>\n

The Eagles promoted offensive line coach, Juan Castillo, to defensive coordinator.\u00a0 Yes, you read that right.\u00a0 Offensive<\/em> line coach promoted to defensive <\/em>coordinator.<\/p>\n

\"\"Yesterday, when I got home from work, I loaded up my iTunes and I saw a podcast pop up that was a Mike Missanelli interview with Eagles beat reporter, Tim McManus.\u00a0 The label on the podcast said “Mikey Miss talks with Tim McManus on the Eagles naming\u00a0Juan Castillo as defensive coordinator.”\u00a0 My first thought was:\u00a0 “Interesting I have heard a lot of different names bandied about – Winston Moss, Darren Perry, even Seth Joyner – but haven’t heard that name out there.”\u00a0 My second thought was:\u00a0 “That is weird I think that our new D-coordinator has the same name as our current O-line coach.\u00a0 I guess it is a popular name in coaching.”\u00a0 Then I thought:\u00a0 “Maybe I am wrong.\u00a0 I thought Juan Castillo was the name of our O-line coach, but maybe\u00a0it is\u00a0Julio Castillo or Felix Castillo or Juan Casilla or something like that.”\u00a0 Not for\u00a0one second did I think that the Eagles promoted the <\/em>Juan Castillo to DC.\u00a0 And, I am not embarrassed to admit that because, well, HE WAS OUR OFFENSIVE LINE COACH.<\/p>\n

Now, for the interesting part of this whole thing:\u00a0 I am not totally sure it is a bad move.\u00a0 I may be the only one left out there (and I am certainly not given a lot of reasons to bolster this opinion), but I trust the Eagles front office, and, in particular, I trust Andy Reid<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Why could it be a good thing, even though it sounds, on the surface, so utterly ridiculous?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. He is, by all accounts, one of the best and brightest assistant coaches in the league.\u00a0 He was always talked about as being one of the best\u00a0two or\u00a0three o-line coaches in the league.\u00a0 Granted, that does not necessarily translate into being able to coach anything<\/em>, but it is nice for the Eagles to be able to keep such a talented young assistant.<\/li>\n
  2. Somehow, they did this without downgrading his old position.\u00a0 One of the things I was worried about here was the loss of Castillo as such a great O-line coach.\u00a0 But, as I said above, Castillo is widely considered one of the best two or three O-line coaches in the league, and the Eagles somehow replaced him with a guy just as highly considered – Howard Mudd from Indianapolis.<\/li>\n
  3. Even though he has not coached defense – at any level – since 1990, Castillo is, at heart, a defensive guy.\u00a0 After all, in his playing days, he was an excellent\u00a0linebacker at Texas A&M – Kingsville, who went on to play linebacker and then coach linebackers in the USFL.<\/li>\n
  4. The scheme, most likely, will not change.\u00a0 When the Eagles had not moved on this vacancy, it looked more and more like they were targeting one of the assistants in the Super Bowl.\u00a0 The reason that is scary is that both of those teams play the 3-4 scheme, and the Eagles do not seem to have the personnel to play the 3-4.\u00a0 Trent Cole might be the best 4-3 defensive end in the NFL, and it is uncertain as to whether he is big enough to play 3-4 DE or quick enough to play 3-4 OLB.\u00a0 Brandon Graham showed a lot of promise before his injury, but he clearly is not fit for 3-4 DE or OLB.\u00a0 Juqua Parker is exclusively a 4-3 guy.\u00a0 And, aside from that, there are two things you must <\/em>have to play an effective 3-4:\u00a0 (1) playmaking outside linebackers and (2) a gigantic havoc-creator nose tackle.\u00a0 Look at the Steelers and Packers.\u00a0 Casey Hampton is an absolute beast in the middle for Pittsburgh, and everyone knows now about the dominance of B.J. Raji for Green Bay.\u00a0 And, then you get the OLBs.\u00a0 Ever heard of Cla Matthews or James Harrison?\u00a0 Ya, they are the playmaking OLBs that I was talking about.\u00a0 Do you think either Ernie Sims or Moise Fokou are the next Lawrence Taylors?\u00a0 Me neither.\u00a0 So, I think that if the Eagles were to switch to a 3-4 defense, it could take upwards of two, three, even four years of good drafts and other personnel moves to accumulate the right mix of defensive players.\u00a0 I am not saying that we are stuck in the 4-3 forever, but I think a switch would lead to growing pains that we may not be prepared to go through right now.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"\"

    Clock management? No. Choosing assistant coaches? Yes.<\/p><\/div>\n

    So, all in all, while this move is absolutely, completely STUNNING, let us not jump off buildings yet.\u00a0 Say what you will about Andy Reid’s clock management or ability to “win the big one,” he has been incredibly successful in many areas over his 11-year coaching career, and one of his most successful areas is evaluating assistant coaches, from Morninwheg to Harbaugh to Spagnuolo to\u00a0Childress to Jauran and even to\u00a0guys like Castillo and other positional coaches that have yet to truly be heard from.\u00a0 I have complete trust in his decisions when it comes to choosing assistants, so I give him the benefit of the doubt here.<\/p>\n

    It is just really strange…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I don’t even know how to express an opinion on this one. The Eagles promoted offensive line coach, Juan Castillo, to defensive coordinator.\u00a0 Yes, you read that right.\u00a0 Offensive line coach promoted to defensive coordinator. Yesterday, when I got home … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4,1185],"class_list":["post-1466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl","tag-eagles","tag-juan-castillo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1468,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions\/1468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}