FROM THE DAY he was given the job as the Eagles' defensive coordinator, Juan Castillo had a perception problem. You know, that he wasn't qualified. A year later, nothing has changed.
The defense blew a bunch of leads early in the season and Castillo was barbecued. The defense then settled down in the last 11 weeks of the season and Castillo was told it was because he was playing against lousy quarterbacks. He will not win this argument, no matter what.
Now that he is going to be back for another season, the truth about Castillo has yet to be written. Only a handful of people really know how good or bad he is at the job. One of them is Andy Reid, who either has a death wish or has decided that Castillo and his assistants - including the newly hired and highly regarded secondary coach, Todd Bowles - are good at what they do.
But here is what stands out: Castillo's complete and total unwillingness to play the media game and maybe alter the public perception. A private conversation with a reporter . . . a whisper, here or there . . . a well-timed arch of the eyebrow - Castillo will not do any of it. He just takes the punches when, well, consider these questions:
1) When Nnamdi Asomugha, Asante Samuel and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie seemed so genetically mismatched as cornerbacks, why was Castillo blamed?
The truth is, this was going to be a handful from the moment that Asomugha, the former Raider, was acquired in free agency. The organizational euphoria at the signing drowned out a fundamental question: How is it possible to make things work when one guy (Asomugha) is best in press coverage while the guy on the other side (Samuel) wants to play soft and act as a swooping predator? And when the third guy (Rodgers-Cromartie) has to deal with suddenly not being a starter anymore? And when none of them is really suited to play in the slot?
This is not to argue that Castillo made every right call, especially early in the season, when Asomugha found himself playing more zone than he wanted to play, and more of a hybrid-ish, safety-ish kind of position than was his custom. It is simply to acknowledge what everybody knows: that Samuel should have been traded once Asomugha was acquired, even acknowledging how good he is, and that the best match of skill sets would have had Asomugha and Rodgers-Cromartie on the outside and Joselio Hanson in the slot.
