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Is Andy Reid snowing us, or Juan Castillo?

The story of how Andy Reid came to hire Juan Castillo for his first staff in Philadelphia is nearly the stuff of legend. With each retelling, the blizzard Castillo drove through to reach Green Bay gets a little worse. The car he drove becomes more rickety. The hours he waited in the freezing cold of the Packers' parking lot become longer and longer.

"I think Juan's doing some good things," Andy Reid said of Juan Castillo. (Clem Murray/Staff Photographer)
"I think Juan's doing some good things," Andy Reid said of Juan Castillo. (Clem Murray/Staff Photographer)Read more

The story of how Andy Reid came to hire Juan Castillo for his first staff in Philadelphia is nearly the stuff of legend. With each retelling, the blizzard Castillo drove through to reach Green Bay gets a little worse. The car he drove becomes more rickety. The hours he waited in the freezing cold of the Packers' parking lot become longer and longer.

When Castillo was promoted to defensive coordinator, that story of perseverance and ultimate success got a lot deeper, just like the snow.

The basics are still true, though. Castillo, having just completed his first season as offensive line coach, was fired along with Ray Rhodes' entire staff after the 1998 season. Reid, still working for the Packers, had become a strong favorite to replace Rhodes. Castillo needed a job and did drive to Green Bay to plead for one. It was definitely snowing. He did wait in the car until Reid got to work and invited him inside. Castillo has been inside ever since.

Well, here we are four games into Castillo's first season as defensive coordinator and, man, it's really coming down again. After Sunday's 24-23 loss to San Francisco, the third straight week in which the defense surrendered a fourth-quarter lead, the drifts are piling up against the brown brick of the NovaCare Complex. The wind is howling and the wolves are lurking just beyond the shadows. Not that long ago, this team could see all the way to February and Indianapolis, but now the visibility is limited to five days and Buffalo.

If this keeps up, the question is whether any of them, including Andy Reid, will be allowed to stay inside the bunker much longer. For the moment, though, because the defense appears fundamentally broken, Castillo is getting most of the attention.

"The coaches are going to stay intact," Reid said Monday, in a tepid vote of confidence for the staff. "I think Juan's doing some good things. If you asked me the same question about myself or [other] coaches or players, there are a lot of good things we're doing. But there are a lot of things we need to work on. It's not one person. It's all of us pulling this thing together and doing our jobs a little better."

Reid is not famous for his accuracy about impending changes he plans to make. For reference, see: Kolb, Kevin; and McDermott, Sean. Both the quarterback and the previous defensive coordinator were given their own public votes of confidence immediately prior to losing their jobs.

Still, it would be a shock if Reid pulled the plug on the Castillo experiment right now or even stripped him of his control over the defense. For one thing, it's not as if you can bring in a new defensive coordinator in mid-season or as if there is a logical replacement on the staff. (Of course, Reid didn't necessarily promote a logical replacement last time, either.)

Castillo is his guy, at least for public consumption, and the head coach will probably give his guy more time to get it right.

"We have a plan and we believe in the things we are doing," Castillo said after Sunday's loss. "We've all been tested in our lives before. This is a test and we're going to come out and get it done. . . . We stay to the plan. If we do that, things will turn around as they always have."

The scary part would be if Castillo is doing the best he can with what he has. The defensive line coach believes in a wide alignment that requires linebackers who can effectively plug the yawning gaps that setup creates. Is that possible with the personnel they have? Can the secondary, which has to play a lot of zone coverage because of the scheme, adapt to that better than it has?

There are a lot of questions and the only thing we really learned from the San Francisco game is that Casey Matthews wasn't the only problem.

"Obviously, I don't like what I'm seeing," Reid said, referring to the team in general. "We're not finishing games. We're supposed to finish games. That's the bottom line."

The other bottom line is that something is going to change if nothing changes. And it might be something big. There is no sense continuing to calculate landing patterns for the Hindenburg if that's what this ship has become. If the Eagles are going to crash, it doesn't matter if Brian Rolle or Esther Rolle is the weakside linebacker.

The roster of possible changes in the event of disaster includes the dismissal of the head coach, particularly if his handpicked assistants continue to insist that the front office's brilliant draft picks can't play. That's the kind of thing that gets on people's nerves.

Meanwhile, will Reid continue to back Castillo if the turnaround doesn't arrive? He might be able to buy himself some time if he tries another direction. Or he might decide that he will live and die with his guys.

Either way, the days are growing shorter now and the barometer is falling rapidly. It could be quite a storm this time. In this organization, it could be remembered as the stuff of legend.