So, was Juan Castillo ever in jeopardy of losing his job as Eagles' defensive coordinator in this most silent of Eagles' offseasons? Seems we'll never know for sure.
With Andy Reid breaking a nearly month-long silence today and admitting to offering recently fired St. Louis Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo a job, he was careful to say that "we never talked about titles" and never indicated that Castillo would be totally out of the picture if Spags had accepted.
But after an unsually long press conference with Reid that lasted 49 minutes and then another 15 minutes or so with Castillo in the hallway afterward, we're no further enlightened about what went down in this last month than we were before.
My take? Castillo was never in danger of being fired, but his job as defensive coordinator would have been changed had Spagnuolo, who decided to accept an offer from New Orleans instead, took Reid up on his offer.
But judge for yourself. Here's the main part of the audio from today's conversation with Castillo:
Here's what we know: Juan Castillo and Marty Mornhinweg are still employed by the Eagles.
Here's what we don't know: Whether Castillo is still the defensive coordinator or how much longer Mornhinweg will still be the offensive coordinator.
Much as head coach Andy Reid and the rest of the Eagles' braintrust have tried to remain out of sight since their season ended on New Year's Day, there's this thing called the Senior Bowl, in which reporters get to stand side-by-side with coaches and scouts and, well, attempt to interview them.
That's what The Inquirer's Jeff McLane did when he bumped into Castillo earlier today at one of the practices. Castillo would neither confirm or deny that he was still the team's defensive coordinator.
"You got to go through Andy," Castillo said. "I'm just working. ... "Anytime we can get up in the morning and we're healthy enough to fight, we're all all right."
Meanwhile, Mornhinweg is thought to be a finalist for the Oakland Raiders job, according to multiple sources, so the Eagles might be making a change there, too.
For those who don't know, the Senior Bowl is sort of a clearinghouse for coaches, including the recently unemployed who are trying to network their way into another position. For example, Johnnie Lynn, the Eagles' recently fired secondary coach, is doing just that.
Anyway, read more about it here and stay tuned for something to break soon with the Eagles, who presumably can't stay silent forever.
If the Eagles had any designs on bringing Steve Spagnuolo back to be their defensive coordinator, they better have a Plan B.
FOX Sport's Jay Glazer reported that Spags has agreed to become the New Orleans' Saints defensive coordinator, after meeting with them today.
So where does this leave the Eagles? Anybody's guess as they continue to remain silent on matters of their coaching staff.
Actually, they may elect to keep Juan Castillo as the defensive coordinator but be forced to hire a new offensive coordinator if Marty Mornhinweg should be hired as head coach of the Oakland Raiders or Indianapolis Colts.
But even though Mornhinweg has been installed as the odds-on favorite in Vegas to take over the Colts, league sources say the Colts haven't even asked permission to interview him yet. The Raiders have, however, and he will be meeting with them soon.
In the meantime, it has become clear that the Eagles are waiting for every last offseason coaching move in the league to be completed before announcing anything. So maybe by the NFL Draft in April we'll have something to report.
Maybe.
Anyway, here's the report from the New Orleans Times Picayune of Spagnuolo's imminent new job.
Now that offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg is in the running to become the Oakland Raiders' head coach, the Eagles could be looking at a minimum of two new coordinators next season.
Defensive coordinator Juan Castillo, as discussed Ad infinitum, may already have been relieved of his duties by a head coach who has just one more season to get the Eagles back into the Super Bowl.
Mornhinweg may not even want to leave yet, though, because his son Skyler will be heading to Penn State in the fall and because the Raiders haven't exactly had a great reputation for treating their employees with class -- even after the death of Al Davis.
But just in case Marty goes, who's out there? My money would be on Andy Reid reaching out to Brad Childress to replace him. Childress left the Eagles in 2006 to become head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. That didn't turn out very well after the Brett Favre experiment went bad in the 2009 NFC Championship Game.
But Childress was effective as a play-caller here, and that could give him an advantage over everybody else in a situation like this -- with the Eagles having no more margin for error.
We're still waiting to hear from the Eagles, whose silence has been deafening ever since the season ended.
But the coordinators are not the only Eagles in the news today.
The team announced middle linebacker Jamar Chaney underwent surgery to repair a herniated disk in his neck. His was one of multiple injuries coach Andy Reid failed to announce after the Eagles finished their season with a 34-10 victory over Washington on Jan. 1.
Finally, the team is taking steps toward finding a backup quarterback to replace free agent Vince Young.
Trent Edwards, who has a good amount of starting experience with the Buffalo Bills, worked out for them this week. He went 14-18 from 2007 through 2010, before ending up with the Raiders this past summer. But he did not make the team and spent the season out of football.
Somehow, I get the feeling he'd still be an upgrade over Young.
More as this situation develops.
Let the speculation begin on whether Eagles tight end Brent Celek actually was injured on the final week of the season, since today's announcement that he had surgery yesterday to repair a sports hernia was the first anyone outside of the team has heard of his condition.
But the probability of that is just about zero, considering that he had surgery "concurrently" to replair a torn labrum in his left hip.
Celek finished second on the team with 62 catches for 811 yards and five touchdowns. He joined Jeremy Maclin and DeSean Jackson as the first trio of Eagles to each top the 800-yard plateau in a season.
This is just another example of the paranoia that exists all around the NFL. Coach Andy Reid decided not to report this because, well, he wasn't really required to report it, based on the league's selected enforcement of violations over the years.
An excellent blog entry by Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com further explores this hot issue.
At any rate, Celek should be OK for all the OTAs.
We will hear from Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie later today for the first time since training camp, when the expectations for this team were higher than ever after a flurry of trade and free agent activity reshaped the roster with all kinds of all-stars.
Few, if any, saw what was coming -- a disastrous run through the first three quarters of the season, before a strong finish that included two wins after being eliminated from the playoffs. They helped salvage a .500 record.
As a result, the owner will face questions today on the immediate future of head coach Andy Reid, the longest current tenured coach in the NFL, and defensive coordinator Juan Castillo, who could be fired or reassigned following a season in which the Eagles blew five fourth-quarter leads.
This might be the most important public appearance by Lurie since trying to explain hiring Reid, then an obscure assistant with Green Bay, in the first place back in 1999.
Reid and the Eagles have accomplished everything but winning a Super Bowl, going 126-81-1 in the regular season and 10-9 in the playoffs since he took charge.
But this will be the third straight season without a playoff victory for a coach who had never gone more than one without advancing before this streak began -- the strongest indicator of all that the Eagles have regressed more than ever under Reid.
Furthermore, the only other time that's happened since Lurie bought the club in 1994, he promptly fired the coach, Ray Rhodes, and replaced him with Reid.
So here we are at another crossroads.
What does Lurie do? What would you like him to answer?
Respond under the comments section here on this blog or shoot me an email at nick.fierro@mcall.com, and I'll see what I can do.
LeSean McCoy won't be breaking any more Eagles' rushing records this season. The third-year running back has been prudently deactivated for today's game against the Washington Redskins.
This is the right move all the way. No sense in putting him at risk in a game that, despite all we've been hearing from the Eagles all week, means absolutely nothing.
It's just too bad the Eagles are not doing the same with other key players, such as quarterback Michael Vick, wide receiver LeSean McCoy and left tackle Jason Peters.
The sense here is that Jason Babin, who is headed to the Pro Bowl along with McCoy and Peters, would rebel violently if told he couldn't play, since he has a chance to set the NFL single-season sack record. So that's why he wasn't included in the above-mentioned group.
But seriously, the Eagles need to think about protecting their key players. As we've ween so many times before with this team and others, major injuries in December and January often carry over into the next season. In some cases, they wipe the next season completely out.
McCoy finishes the season with 1,309 rushing yards, fifth best in franchise history.
Today's game actually could be more interesting with McCoy out, because we'll get to see a lot more of rookie Dion Lewis.
Also inactive for the Eagles: CB Asante Samuel, DT Cedric Thornton, G Julian Vandervelde, WR Ron Johnson, LB Greg Lloyd and DT Mike Patterson. Patterson has the flu.
Other guys to watch: safety Jaiquawn Jarrett, who's starting in place of Kurt Coleman; and cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, starting for Asante Samuel. Both could be auditioning for full-time jobs next season, with Rodgers-Cromartie the best bet to land one.
Today was coordinator central here at the Eagles' NovaCare Complex headquarters, where special teams boss Bobby April started it off by revealing Chad Hall will be their newest kickoff returner, replacing rookie running back Dion Lewis for this Sunday's season finale against Washington.
"The house has not been good, so we need to change the deck we're playing with," said April in one of his patented analogies. "Dion has been fine. We need to block better, we need to have a better scheme, and ... I have to do a better job setting that up ... but we did think changing the ingredients will give us a little more spark."
Lewis likely will get a lot more snaps with the offense, though, because starter LeSean McCoy might be sidelined with an ankle injury. Even if he's healthy, the Eagles might not want to risk him ending up like Adrian Peterson.
Anyway, the 5-8, 187-pound Hall, who looks like a high school sophomore, will be back there to return kicks Sunday.
Next up was offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg, who praised McCoy and tackle Jason Peters for making the Pro Bowl.
Mornhinweg said "several others" were deserving, without being more specific, but admitted when pressed that he thought tight end Brent Celek, who has a team-high 56 receptions, is one of them.
"Brent has been at a Pro Bowl level," he said. "Statistically, early, it didn't show."
Celek had only nine receptions and no touchdowns through the first five games. In the last 10, he's caught 47 passes, including four TDs.
Finally, defensive coordinator Juan Castillo predicted Nate Allen would make the Pro Bowl one day. Not sure where he's getting that as Allen has had an inconsistent season while struggling to come back from major knee surgery.
But Allen might need to be at a Pro Bowl level Sunday, when he will start alongside rookie Jaiquawn Jarrett. Jarrett, who will be starting for just the second time, is in for Kurt Coleman, who landed on injured reserve this week with a biceps injury.
Call it an epic Freudian slip when Eagles coach Andy Reid announced to the public today that "Derrick Coleman" would be going on the injured reserve list with a biceps tear.
He meant, of course, to say "Kurt Coleman," the injured safety, not the former 76er who spent most of his NBA career stealing more money than Bonnie and Clyde.
As of now, the Eagles have made no roster move to replace Coleman but should by the end of the day.
Reid also said RB LeSean McCoy (ankle) and CB Asante Samuel (hamstring) would miss practice and that it would be "a stretch" for Samuel to play in Sunday's season finale against the Washington Redskins.
The sense here is that the same is true of McCoy, but we'll see. All the Eagles need is for McCoy to tear up his knee, Adrian Peterson-style, in the final game, with no playoff berth forthcoming.
This opens the door once again for rookie Jaiquawn Jarrett, the second-round pick out of Temple who has been slow to pick up the pro game.
"Every day is progress," Jarrett said. "Every day you get better. You learn every day. So I'm much more comfortable this month than I was last month."
More on Jarrett in tomorrow's editions of The Morning Call.
Whether you believe the original report from the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday connecting the dots between San Diego, St. Louis and Philadelphia, everything would seem to make sense.
Reporter Kevin Acee has learned that Chargers general manager A.J. Smith could soon be on his way out and headed for the Rams, who are fixing to replace head coach and former Eagles assistant Steve Spagnuolo with former Eagles assistant Jon Gruden.
He also reports that it's almost certain Spags, who also was an assistant coach at Lafayette College, will then immediately join Andy Reid's staff in Philadelphia as defensive coordinator, replacing Juan Castillo.
Everyone remembers Spagnuolo as the man the Giants were allowed to pluck from the Eagles' staff in 2007 to be their defensive coordinator. He then crafted a defense that was good enough to pull off one of the all-time Super Bowl upsets when the Giants shut down the New England Patriots' offensive juggernaut.
The Eagles, as you might guess, aren't commenting. And Reid, when asked yesterday about whether Castillo was coming back, responded: "You guys are in a different place than I’m at right now. I’ve got another game left to coach and get ready for. My mind doesn’t go in any of those places. You guys know what I think of Juan. I know you have to ask that question, but we are focused completely on the Washington Redskins."
Hey, better than "yes," which is how he responded to the same question last year about defensive coordinator Sean McDermott. Reid then fired McDermott anyway.
The thinking here is that the Eagles will at least wait to see what happens with the Giants this Sunday before deciding whether to pursue Spags. If the Giants miss the playoffs again, head coach Tom Coughlin could be fired, which also likely would mean the end of defensive coordinator Perry Fewell's reign as well.
The last thing the Eagles want to see is the Giants rebuilding their coaching staff with Spags as their coordinator. So maybe they pursue him to keep him away from a division rival.
Castillo, who seems to have grown into his role after a rough period of on-the-job training, might not be fired, but reassigned temporarily -- until the Eagles win the Super Bowl and Spags is given another chance as a head coach somewhere, clearing the way for Castillo to return to that spot.
Stop laughing. It's all just a little too over-the-top right now, which is precisely the point of this particular blog entry.
Everything is just speculation right now. The sense here is that the Eagles haven't decided anything yet, but that bringing Spags back certainly wouldn't hurt.
For now, we'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out.