Understanding The Juan Castillo Firing

And so, the Juan Castillo era ends.

In what was perhaps the most surprising, previously-expected coaching move, Andy Reid yesterday ended "the offensive line coach?" experiment. People are looking at this move a lot of different ways, but I want to examine it from Reid's perspective.

Let's go back to the end of 2011. After such a disappointing season, it was obvious to everyone that Castillo's time as defensive coordinator had been a disaster. It was the main stumbling block over which the Eagles staggered to an 8-8 finish. Jeff Lurie said publicly that such results were unacceptable, implicitly placing Reid's job on the line if he couldn't deliver changes.

My impression is that overall, that message never sunk in for Reid. I don't blame him entirely. 14 years is a long time to stay in any job, and a certain sense of complacency likely developed. Behind closed doors, considering their friendship, Lurie probably conveyed the ultimatum in the most apologetic and equivocal manner possible. Moreover, the person most likely pushing for a Reid exit, Joe Banner, was instead the one who left.

So while I doubt Reid needed anyone to tell him the problems Castillo had last season, he only half-heartedly tried to replace him. There were rumors about the job being offered to Steve Spagnuolo and others, but Reid could have found someone to replace Castillo if he really felt it was essential. After all, he could have made Todd Bowles that replacement in the offseason.

Instead, Reid kept Castillo and tried to fill in around him. He added talented young defenders in the early rounds of the draft, traded for a top-notch middle linebacker, and brought Bowles on as shadow-coordinator. Without feeling the urgency of his job on the line, Reid convinced himself that those moves were adequate. And through the early part of this season, he could find reasons to believe that.

The defense, overall, wasn't the Eagles' biggest problem through 5 games and 3 quarters. There were too many turnovers. The offensive line, because of injuries and no depth, was awful. Play-calling was an issue, too. Special teams difficulties exposed Bobby April as not being the genius coach everyone expected.

With five minutes left in Sunday's game, I bet Reid was feeling relatively optimistic. The team was poised to go 4-2 into the bye, having survived early struggles. The idea that his job is one the line was undoubtedly far from his mind. But things can change quickly. My hypothesis is that Reid took that late-game collapse harder than anyone. Suddenly, staring down the barrel of 3-3, 2011's issues didn't look so far away, and finishing 8-8 again and losing his job suddenly loomed large.

You could see this idea play out in Reid's press conference yesterday, when he said:

"I thought we were making progress, I saw us making progress. We made progress through the last four games. I kinda liked the direction we were going. I thought we started off pretty good, and then I started seeing some trends come back that I wasn't real happy about. So I just wanted to make sure that we — I'm not going to go into detail on it, but there were just things that I saw that I didn't want to go in that direction."

Where complacency had reigned, desperation and determination set in. There is no margin of error for Reid this time, and he finally realized that. Firing Castillo doesn't fix every problem the Eagles have. Not even close. But it was the biggest change Reid could make overnight -- and it sent a strong message to the rest of the organization, coaches and players alike.

Castillo wasn't a scapegoat, he was a warning shot. The move said, "I'm willing to admit, for the first time, that I made a major mistake in hiring, and then retaining, Juan. That's on me. But everyone else better be on notice. Because if I can fire Juan, I can and will fire you too if you don't perform. I may go down this year, but I certainly am not going to hold anything back."

Too Little, Too Late?

Reuben Frank:

According to a source, Andy called Juan into his office this morning and dismissed him. Juan will no longer be with the team in any capacity

More to come on this, obviously.

Who Do You Blame For The Eagles' Collapse?

One thing I try very hard to do after every game is approach the evaluation and apportioning of blame objectively. Rarely will you see me harping on the same thing week after week. There's a time to blame Michael Vick, for example, and a time to blame those around him. There's a time to blame Juan Castillo, and a time to give him a pass.

This week, for the first hours after the game finished, I couldn't figure out where to place blame. With 5 minutes left, the Eagles were up 10 points and had a 90 percent win probability according to Advanced NFL Stats. I'm sure I wasn't the only one anticipating a 4-2 record going into the bye, and a locker room full of optimistic players and coaches. The defense had held their ground against Calvin Johnson. The offense had started slowly but rebounded to take a commanding 4th quarter lead.

Then, almost inexplicably, the team collapsed. They had two offensive drives. Both flopped, one on a catastrophic scale. Both defensive drives were failures as well.

Plenty of blame to go around when something like that happens. Coaching, to start. Andy Reid deserves significant blame for allowing such a total failure. Castillo, who Nnamdi (Best Game As An Eagle) Asomugha seemed to point to for changing the play calling in the final minutes. Fletcher Cox for getting himself ejected. Nate Allen for getting himself hurt (kidding).

Ultimately, my ire falls on the units in the trenches. Reid has always said that you build your team from the lines outward. Somehow he's failed at that this year. The Eagles offensive line seems to be at a low point in Reid's tenure. A combination of injuries to two critical members, general lack of depth, a former first round draft pick who remains awful, and two generally solid guys having down years. Vick made two poor throws that resulted in interceptions, but otherwise played good enough to win. The offensive line nearly got him killed, though, culminating in a 3 play, -21 yard overtime opening drive.

The real head-scratcher is on the other side of the line, where the Eagles should be getting tons of pressure. As has certainly been parroted around Philadelphia by now, the defense has now gone 3 games without a sack. Just one, in the right situation, might have been enough to win yesterday's game. After the game, players like Cullen Jenkins and Darryl Tapp seemed as surprised as anyone else. They kept repeating mantras about teams using more protection, but there was little passion behind those excuses.

This team is now 3-3, which means that at least in the standings, they've made little improvement from last year's "unacceptable" performance. They better find some way to fix this, or the 2013 Eagles team is going to be the start of a new rebuilding era.

Photo from Getty.

"We Should Be A Whole Lot Better"

It's not be the biggest question facing the Eagles, but it might be the one we have the fewest answers for: why has the team's vaunted defensive line come up so short?

Last year's group racked up the sacks, and Jim Washburn publicly boasted that the unit should only improve from there. Let me rummage up his exact words:

"I’ll be crushed, hell, I’ll quit if it ain’t a whole lot better. They can even fire my ass if we’re not a whole lot better. We should be a lot better."

Well, they're not better, at least in the results column. The Eagles have fewer sacks through the first five games than they had through the first two games last year. But again, the question is, why?

After the Steelers loss, Jason Babin blamed the lack of production on facing more max protection from offenses. I wanted to take a look and see if that was the case. As you can see at right, under "Blockers/Play", the Eagles are facing more blockers. The first table shows 2011, in which opponents averaged 5.46 blockers per play according to Pro Football Focus. Through five games in 2012, that average is up to 5.59 blockers per play.

Doesn't seem like a big increase, but it's significant. And specifically over the last two games, opponents put in more pass blockers per play than in all but two games in 2011. That coincided with the Eagles defensive line's two lowest Pass Rush Productivity scores (PRP) since Washburn took over as coach. Seems like there's probably a connection, proving Babin at least partially right.

However, with that said, when you plot the Eagles single-game PRP scores against opponent's average blockers, the results are murky at best. There's high volatility here, and it makes seeing a simple causation very difficult. See below, with the green dots indicating 2012 games.

Perhaps more max protection really is the main issue, and we just can't see it in the graph. Perhaps there is more chipping and other protection schemes that don't even trigger a full "blocker" designation. Or maybe there are other factors at work, even the advancing age of guys like Babin. Tough to say.

Photo from Getty.

The Adjustment Bureau

On-again-off-again blogger Derek Sarley hits us with another great All-22 post about the Eagles defensive issues on Sunday. Prepare to get educated about gap assignments against the run.

Guts or Glory

Reuben Frank came out with some quotes from Andy Reid about the "toughness" of this Eagles team:

“I like the grit of this football team,” he said Monday in an uncharacteristically descriptive assessment of his team. “I like the toughness of this football team. I like the makeup of this football team.”

“I saw it the end of last year and I’ve seen it through training camp and now I’ve seen it the first five games here,” he said. “You can go into hostile territory and know that they’re all in and they’re not flinching an inch and they’re not backing down from anybody and they’re going in to win the game and that’s their mentality. That’s a good feeling for the head coach. That’s a very good feeling.”

“They were right there 100 percent the whole game, and that’ll take you a long way in this league. You’ve got to start with that. You’ve got to have that.”

"Grit" doesn't seem to have much to do with the change in the Eagles this year. Were the teams over the last few years lacking a hardened desire to win? I doubt it. What's really changed is the defense. This is the first year since 2008 that Reid can count on staying in close games. They may not always be able to pull it out in the end (see last Sunday), but this year's Eagles defense has mitigated offensive mistakes and given Michael Vick second and third and fourth chances to go win the game. That's tremendous.

Let's Not Panic Just Yet

While I missed the Eagles-Steelers game live, I certainly caught the harsh real-time reaction to the loss. However, once I caught up on the game myself yesterday, I was surprised how little cause for alarm I saw. Sure, the Eagles lost. But not all losses are created equal.

The Eagles lost by 2 points, on the road at a good Pittsburgh team. That, on its face, should be enough to keep the sky from falling. The Arizona loss and even the Cleveland win were both more alarming.

For starters, the defense continues to play well overall. They went into the game 2nd in defensive DVOA, and allowed only 16 points to a Pittsburgh team that averaged nearly 26 per game through the first three weeks, was coming off its bye, and returned its top running back. I don't see much to complain about with that performance.

Granted, there are shortcomings on defense that need to be shored up. The defensive line got pressure on Ben Roethlisberger, but failed to record a sack. The run defense was lacking at times, especially when Fletcher Cox was on the sidelines. And Nnamdi Asomugha continues to show that he's not a bad corner, but certainly a limited one. But these are complaints at the fringes of success.

The bigger question marks were on offense, but even there I see more silver linings than storm clouds. For the second straight week, Andy Reid toned down the offense, keeping the run-pass ratio under control while providing easier routes for Michael Vick. Vick responded with his second straight solid week through the air: completing two-thirds of his passes, two touchdowns and zero interceptions. And the offense left multiple plays on the field. Obviously there was the fumble down at the goal line, which is just killer bad luck. The Eagles also should have received a defensive pass interference call on Ike Taylor against DeSean Jackson in the second quarter. That would have put them in position for another score.

The biggest problem, which we already knew going in, was the offensive line. They don't have the individual players to match up well, but they could *ahem* muddle through if only their communication was better. The Steelers' zone-blitz scheme isn't easy to protect against, but you can't have rushers coming free at the quarterback if you want to win in the NFL.

One final point, regarding Michael Vick's fumbling. There's a lot of hand-wringing over it, even people saying he should be benched. I don't believe that. Vick has always been rather fumble-prone, with a rate often hovering around or just below 10% of all sacks and runs. He led the NFL in fumbles twice, in 2004 and 2010. But through all that, he's never had a fumble rate as bad as he is putting up this year.

A few weeks back, I suggested that Vick's interception rate was ridiculously high, bordering on a statistical anomaly. Since then, after two interception-less games, it has dropped to just a tick under last year's number. At this point, I'm looking at Vick's absurd 17.4% fumble rate and thinking the same thing. He's probably never going to be great at controlling the ball, but this poor trend isn't likely to sustain itself either.

Photo from Getty.

All-22: Hey Look, An Eagles Run Game!

Was that really Andy Reid on the sideline last Sunday? The Eagles called 17 runs in the second half against the Giants, shocking pretty much everyone. And, as I pointed out on Monday, that new focus on the run game made Michael Vick into a much better quarterback. With the pressure off of his back, Vick completed 8 of 11 attempts for 109 yards in the second half.

Let's dive into the All-22 coaches film on this one. The first thing to note is that the Eagles didn't just run the ball more—they called different run plays. The staple of the Howard Mudd offensive line is the stretch to the outside (read more about that here). Those outside runs behind athletic linemen worked great last year, but the patchwork offensive line the Eagles trotted out last week couldn't execute the same way.

In the second half (except down by the goal line), the Eagles abandoned those run schemes in favor of more straight-up blocking, often with the I-Formation. It worked:

Linemen set the edge, McCoy follows his FB.

Even Dallas Reynolds got great push here.

The Eagles also used Stanley Havili in an H-Back set up for a few plays, giving them some interesting flexibility. Here they fake the toss to Bryce Brown and hand off to Havili coming up the gut instead. He follows Todd Herremans into the hole:

Later, they came back to the same look and used it to get numbers on the right side instead:

Suddenly, with the run game working, Vick's job gets so much easier. The linebackers actually bought this run fake, leaving Brent Celek wide open over the middle:

And with the defense now trying to both stop the run and prevent the pass, remembering to contain and control Vick's scrambling becomes a greater problem. He ran 3 times for 30 yards in the second half:

More All-22: The Eagles Early Offensive Line Struggles, How The Eagles Offense Made It Easy On Mike Vick