Steve Spagnuolo

Despite an ambiguously written report that Steve Spagnuolo was "expected to be back in Philadelphia by the end of the week," the Eagles will not announce any coaching hires at least until Sunday. Reid, along with many of the Eagles coaching and front office staff, is away on vacation this week, according to a source close to the situation. That won't preclude the Eagles coach from working and making changes to his coaching staff, of course. Reid formulated his plan for restructuring his staff in the wake of defensive coordinator Sean McDermott's firing last year while vacationing on a Caribbean island.

A byproduct of winning in the NFL has always been losing the people who helped you win. Eagles coach Andy Reid has learned to live with that fact, and he did so again yesterday when linebackers coach Steve Spagnuolo left Philadelphia to take the job of defensive coordinator with the NFC East rival New York Giants. Spagnuolo, 47, had worked with the Eagles since Reid took over as head coach in 1999. He initially held the title of defensive assistant, then was in charge of the defensive backs from 2001 to '03 before becoming the linebackers coach in 2004 after Ron Rivera left to become the defensive coordinator with the Chicago Bears.

Steve Spagnuolo spent last week devising a defensive scheme to stop Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers today inside the frozen confines of Lambeau Field. All that's at stake for the New York Giants' first-year defensive coordinator is a trip to the Super Bowl. Only the winner of today's NFC championship game gets a ticket to the NFL title game two weeks from today in Glendale, Ariz. It has already been quite an ascent for Spagnuolo, whose NFL coaching career started when Andy Reid arrived in Philadelphia back in 1999.

IT HAS BEEN more than a week now since Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie told us Andy Reid would be back for a 14th season as the team's head coach. Since then, the question that continues to hold the most traction with the public is whether defensive coordinator Juan Castillo will be replaced and whether fired Rams head coach Steve Spagnuolo will be the replacement. It makes sense - because Castillo was such an unconventional choice for the job, and because of all the fourth-quarter leads the team saw evaporate early in the season, and because Spagnuolo is so highly regarded following his work here and in New York as an assistant coach.

There was no official word from St. Louis yesterday about the possibility of Eagles quarterbacks coach Pat Shurmur joining new Rams head coach Steve Spagnuolo, but a league source said two NFL teams have asked permission to speak with Shurmur about becoming their offensive coordinator. Shurmur, 43, is an original member of Andy Reid's staff. He spent 3 years coaching tight ends and now has been the quarterbacks coach for seven seasons. Spagnuolo worked with Shurmur the first eight of those seasons, before becoming the Giants' defensive coordinator and winning last season's Super Bowl.

HALL OF FAME cornerback Darrell Green played with both Juan Castillo and Todd Bowles. Green said yesterday he thinks they will work together well on the Eagles' defensive staff. "I think Todd will bring great value to an underachieving secondary," said Green, a Redskins great. "This may be the missing link, from a defensive standpoint. These are two good people. These guys have worked their butts off, and I pray nobody tries to pit them against each other. That wouldn't be fair to either of them.

At the start of the St. Louis Rams' coaching search, Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo was not really on the list. General manager Billy Devaney assumed New York would be back in the Super Bowl and didn't think he could afford to wait for Spagnuolo. "I'm such a great predictor of football games," Devaney said yesterday. "As soon as they were eliminated it was like, 'Wow, let's start this process.' " Devaney's long-term friendship with Spagnuolo helped speed things from there.

Always the energetic lefthander, Jim Zorn had an upbeat but nervous start to his coming-out event with the Washington Redskins. The new coach got the team colors wrong - he called them maroon and black. He paid tribute to assistant Gregg Williams, who was recently fired. He lacked the polish of his predecessor, Joe Gibbs, who watched yesterday's news conference at Redskins Park auditorium. Zorn himself said it was nothing short of "miraculous" that he was standing where he was: a few feet behind the team's three Super Bowl trophies, essentially making the jump from quarterbacks coach.

The Eagles tweaked their coaching staff yesterday, announcing three shifts in personnel. The most noticeable change was that of Steve Spagnuolo, who spent the last two years as a defensive assistant/quality-control coach. He was promoted to defensive backs coach and will join Leslie Frazier in coaching one of the Eagles' strongest positions. Sean McDermott, formerly the assistant to head coach Andy Reid, also was promoted. He was given Spagnuolo's old job. Bill Shuey, who had interned with the team during the last two training camps, was named the new assistant to the head coach.

INDIANAPOLIS fired head coach Jim Caldwell yesterday, a little more than 2 weeks after the Colts' worst season in 2 decades. "This is obviously a big transitional time for us, but I know we're excited moving forward and it's hard when you say goodbyes to some people," team owner Jim Irsay said. "But it's part of the business. " The day after a season-ending loss at Jacksonville assured Indy of the No. 1 draft pick in April with a 2-14 mark, Irsay fired team vice chairman Bill Polian, the architect of the Colts' success, and his son, Chris, the handpicked general manager.

SO, LET'S GET this straight: The New Orleans Saints run a bounty scheme for the past 3 years, win a Super Bowl with it, get caught, their excellent head coach gets suspended . . . And they wind up with a better head coach? This is justice? Somehow, it doesn't seem likely that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell expected the Saints to become a more respected team when he played hangin' judge last week. Goodell suspended Sean Payton for 10 months, beginning April 1, unless Payton appeals.

I'm finished whining about Andy Reid's still being here as coach of the Eagles. Whether we like it or not, Reid is here for at least one more year - his 14th season as the Birds' head man, if you're counting. And we all are. So long as we don't have a choice, I'd like to get behind Reid and hope he can finally spin off an appearance in the Super Bowl. I'm not mad at him. And you'd have to be a cretin to root against the Eagles next season to assure that Reid gets fired. But after listening to Reid's first news conference since the Eagles season ended, I've got to wonder whether the man has any idea what he's doing.

Here we are, Thursday of Super Bowl week, and maybe the country is secretly captivated by the game that will take place in Indianapolis on Sunday between the Giants and the Patriots, but if so it is a pretty well-kept secret. There is more buzz about whether Ron Paul will get his own reality series once the Republican primaries are over, assuming it is possible they will end someday. We know that on Sunday evening people will gather to watch the game, if only to put a dent in the annual glut of guacamole, which, if not consumed, will turn brown in the fridge and eventually grow fur. That the matchup between the New York Eli Faces and the New England Brady Clefts isn't much more appetizing doesn't really matter.

This originally appeared yesterday in a Daily News Eagletarian blog by Les Bowen.   STILL MULLING the fallout from Tuesday's Andyfest I must have been a little less excited about the Steve Spagnuolo revelation than some folks were. It was exactly what most of us figured must have happened. I think the Eagles knew from the get-go that Spagnuolo, given a choice, would prefer something in a new city with a no-doubt, slam-dunk top contender. Remember, Spags and Andy share the same agent, Bob LaMonte.

IF THIS THING is to get turned around by Andy Reid in his 14th season as the Eagles' head coach, the answers lay in the ashes of the first five games of his 13th season. It sounds as if that has been the focus of Reid's last month. Steve Spagnuolo? No Steve Spagnuolo? Yeah, there was that, too. It makes for interesting conversation, and it made for an interesting press conference yesterday as Reid acknowledged he offered the former St. Louis Rams coach a position on his defensive staff earlier this month but then wouldn't say what position he offered.

ANDY REID talked for 48 minutes and 23 seconds yesterday, and we still can't say we know for sure why it took a month after the season ended to announce Juan Castillo was coming back as defensive coordinator, or for Reid to opine that the combination of too many turnovers on offense and "moving parts" on defense doomed the Eagles to an impossibly slow start. We did learn that Reid tried to hire Steve Spagnuolo for some sort of unspecified role that apparently would not have entailed Castillo losing the coordinator title.

Andy Reid offered Steve Spagnuolo a spot on his coaching staff, the Eagles coach said Tuesday, adding a rare revelation to a news conference announcing what was otherwise well known - that Juan Castillo would return as defensive coordinator. But Reid would not say what job he offered Spagnuolo and how it would have affected Castillo if Spagnuolo had accepted. "My feeling was that we could have two great coaches on defense. That's even better than just having one," Reid said during a 49-minute news conference that served as an analysis of a disappointing season and an endorsement of Castillo.

Exactly four weeks after owner Jeffrey Lurie told everyone that Juan Castillo was far from Andy Reid's first choice to lead the defense in 2011, Reid finally found the podium himself and confirmed he didn't get his guy for 2012, either. He's sticking with Castillo again because Steve Spagnuolo turned down an open-ended job offer from Reid, preferring to become the defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints. Reid didn't come out and say Spagnuolo would have definitely demanded to be atop the defensive organizational chart, but if that had been the case, it would have happened.

When Andy Reid was hired to coach the Eagles, he helped Juan Castillo preserve his career in Philadelphia. Now that he has done it again, keeping Castillo on as defensive coordinator, Reid is hoping that Castillo can return the favor and help keep the head coach firmly ensconced at the NovaCare Complex. Reid, facing a make-or-break season in 2012, is bringing back the longtime offensive line coach whose early struggles as defensive coordinator (along with offensive turnovers)

INDIANAPOLIS - Ending weeks of speculation, the Eagles hired Todd Bowles to be their defensive backs coach. But the more important tidbit to emerge from Monday's news - first reported by The Inquirer - was not that the Eagles were adding a veteran secondary coach to their staff. It was that hiring Bowles "finalized their 2012 coaching staff," according to the team's release. Read: Juan Castillo is coming back for a second season as defensive coordinator. For weeks, Eagles fans and the media worked themselves into a froth wondering what would become of the embattled Castillo, who had not received a word of support from Andy Reid because the coach was not going to speak until after he had finalized his staff.