Up until now, coaches didn't have much to lose from the lockout. Many were tied up in draft evaluations and self-scouting, just as they had always been after the season.
But with the draft over, minicamps would normally follow. They haven't, leaving new coaches and coordinators unable to instill their philosophies.
Castillo, however, refuses to concede that there is a downside.
"It allows us to be more thorough with our playbook and our defensive plan," he said.
This week, for example, he and his staff hashed over what blitzes to use on third downs and how to make the concepts easier to teach - using two different names that can be used for eight different varieties of a given blitz, for example.
"Jim Johnson got some great blitzes. I want to have them all in the package, but how can I do it here so that it's simple for my guys so that everybody can understand," Castillo said. "To play fast, you can't be thinking."
Castillo was careful not to criticize departed defensive coordinator Sean McDermott, but the shift seems to be a reaction to whispers that McDermott's plans were too complicated.
But changing the verbiage isn't the same as teaching on the field. As the lockout drags on, new coaches will face some of the biggest challenges, said former quarterback Rich Gannon.
"The coaches want to install as much as they can in minicamps, see what the new players can retain, then have them come back for other minicamps and offseason workouts. So by the time they get to training camps, they have seen what they need to do a few times," Gannon, now a CBS analyst, told the Associated Press. "If the first time they do any of that is in training camp, that's not going to get it done."
