The Philadelphia Eagles' defeat at the hands of the Lions 26-23 on Sunday prompted some changes and defensive coordinator Juan Castillo was the first to be given the sack. Eagles head coach Andy Reid, has replaced Castillo with secondary coach Todd Bowles
Castillo's experiments with offense-to-defense coaching did not work well.
The news came as a surprise as Castillo had been with the Eagles for 18 long years. Reid said that it was a tough decision for him to fire the defensive coordinator.
"I put Juan in this situation and things didn't work out the way I had hoped," Reid said. "I take full responsibility for putting him in that situation. I have to do what I think is right whether it's with public opinion or against public opinion."
In Sunday's game the Eagles' blew a 10-point lead with only 5 minutes remaining. A week prior to that the Eagles defense allowed Pittsburgh to win in the final moments of the game. They rallied for a winning field goal.
Castillo's moves were being scrutinized minutely by the team management ever since he took over as offensive line coach. The Eagles struggled at 4-8 initially last season when they started however, the defense improved considerably in their four-game winning streak towards the end of the season.
Reid has clearly indicated that more changes are likely. "Please understand that offense, defense and special teams right now, we need to get better," he said. "I'm going to continue to work through that and it's my responsibility to do that.
"I'm just bringing this to you because this is what's happened so far. I'm still evaluating."
Meanwhile Jeffrey Lurie, the team owner, had already made it clear in preseason that they would not tolerate another 8-8 season. He even stated last year that he thought of firing Reid after the team's lackluster performance.
Reid added: "You fight to win football games as a football team. You try to make your football team the best possible football team they can be. You try to better yourself every day. You want your coaches to better themselves every day.
"You want your players to do it and you hope you have an influence on helping them become the best they can be. That's my job and that's how I go about doing it."
Bowles said: "I'm very familiar with the personnel. That's not going to be a problem. Our thing right now is to go over our self-scouting, see what we do well and what we don't do well and try to minimize the things we don't do well, if not get rid of them all together. Make sure we're playing to each player's strength."
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