That old Dylan line could describe Juan Castillo right now…
He’s down in Mobile, Alabama, representing the role of defensive coordinator for the Eagles at the Senior Bowl… but still awaiting the imprimatur of Andy Reid and the Eagles front office.
I can relate… one of my earlier jobs was as a marketing director for a start-up Apple software distributor in the ’80’s… They sent me to an “AppleFest” trade show in Boston to represent the company…Steve Jobs was there, too… That was in April…by June, I had been informed the company was being taken over by a new ownership coalition…and my services were no longer required.
Hopefully Juan Castillo is not being set up for a similar fate. I mean, for Juan’s sake…
Here’s the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bob Ford’s take on the story:
“Practice for the Senior Bowl began Monday, and NFL coaches and scouts gathered once again in godforsaken Mobile, Ala., to pretend they can divine something about the current crop of potential draft picks that four years of videotape couldn’t already tell them.”
“Some of these players won’t take part in the February scouting combine, and this might be the only chance to see them work out live and, well, everyone else is doing it. So, off they go with their clipboards and their stopwatches and their stubborn belief that the only way to beat the next guy is to put in one more hour than he does.”
“Juan Castillo, who leads the league in hours (put in on the job), is there as part of the Eagles contingent of clipboards. The defensive coordinator everyone assumed would become the former defensive coordinator soon after the end of the season still has the title, and it looks as if people better start getting used to that.”
“The assumption during most of the past month was that Reid had a plan and was waiting for just the right moment to put it into motion. Let’s see. He was going to place Juan Castillo with Minnesota as Leslie Frazier’s defensive coordinator and then hire former assistant Steve Spagnuolo, relieved of head coaching duties by the Rams, as his own coordinator. Or he was going to move Castillo to the defensive backs assistant job that came open when Johnnie Lynn was fired and hire some other coordinator. Or he was going to bring in a veteran to be assistant head coach/defense and leave Castillo as coordinator but give him some help. Or … or … something.”
Bob Ford dramatizes the situation quite nicely.
As Ford puts it, it might still be that Reid has a plan, or it might be that all the speculation was just wind blowing through the echo chamber created by a lack of action when action seemed to be demanded. Nature abhors a vacuum, but it’s got nothing on the national football media.
Whatever the blueprint for the future, there is no indication that removing Castillo from his post is part of it. Four teams hired new defensive coordinators in January, and it’s not like the next Buddy Ryan is about to be discovered while biding his time as someone’s cornerbacks coach. Up in Minnesota, Frazier removed Fred Pagac as coordinator and replaced him with defensive backs coach Alan Williams, who has never been a coordinator. At least he was coaching on the proper side of the ball, however. As for Pagac, he agreed to stay on as a second linebackers coach, so if you think Reid runs an odd staff, take a look at that one.
Spagnuolo, of course, went to New Orleans as coordinator, replacing Gregg Williams, who made a lateral move to St. Louis to take that same job with new coach Jeff Fisher. If the Eagles ever had any actual interest in Spagnuolo or he in them, it wasn’t apparent.
Elsewhere, there is plenty of movement around the league while the Eagles remain fixed in place. There is a head-coaching search in Oakland (which includes Eagles offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg as a supposed front-runner) and others in Indianapolis and Tampa Bay. There are also a slew of offensive coordinator openings and, if the last year had gone somewhat differently, Castillo might make sense as a candidate for one of those. Perhaps “that is Reid’s master plan. If so, it’s well hidden. Eventually, Andy Reid will come out and say what is becoming obvious: He thinks Castillo was a good choice as defensive coordinator and still does. Business may have suffered a downturn in 2011, but it will still be business as usual in 2012.
“Or perhaps he does have a surprise in store. And so we wait, as February crowds January and the clipboards and stopwatches begin to sketch the rough landscape of another season. The NFL rolls on as always, and, as far as we can tell, so do the Eagles.”— Bob Ford
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THE LEE EVANS “CATCH” controversy….
One of the many hot topics in the wake of Sunday’s conference championship games is Lee Evans non-catch at the end of regulation in the Pats-Ravens game. Over on Slate, Josh Levin has a good analysis of the catch. Levin seems to think that a strict application of the NFL rule on touchdown catches suggests that Evans did make the catch. Here’s the language he looks at:
Item 3: End Zone Catches. If a player controls the ball while in the end zone, both feet, or any part of his body other than his hands, must be completely on the ground before losing control, or the pass is incomplete.
Note: In the field of play, if a catch of a forward pass has been completed, after which contact by a defender causes the ball to become loose before the runner is down by contact, it is a fumble, and the ball remains alive. In the end zone, the same action is a touchdown, since the receiver completed the catch beyond the goal line prior to the loss of possession, and the ball is dead when the catch is completed.
Okay, so the thing you have to determine is—did Evans complete the catch? I say he did by the strictest interpretation of the end-zone rule. This assumes he had both feet down with possession of the ball prior to the late strip by Sterling Moore. Since Evans backpedaled into the endzone, I say he should get credit for two (and possibly three) feet down— nobody seems to be looking at his first backpedal step as he caught the ball going away from the defender.
Levin’s article does get at another interesting issue; the limitations of instant replay and the metaphysics of football. Defining a catch is hard stuff: when slowed down, some valid catches look questionable and some questionable catches look valid. This is true of a lot of plays. On close examination, what was once clear looks murky; this is a problem for the NFL and one that’s exacerbated by replay.
The only reason I’m obsessing about this is some day (and that day may never come) a non-call like this is going to affect the outcome of an Eagles game…and it better not cost us a championship.
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