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Reid: Childress a great fit in Cleveland

When Marty Mornhinweg's name surfaced as a potential head-coaching candidate in Oakland and Indianapolis, many wondered whether Brad Childress would return to Philadelphia to replace him.

While Mornhinweg got an interview with the Raiders, he was not offered the job and remains with the Eagles.

Childress, meanwhile, was hired last week as the Browns' new offensive coordinator. And while Andy Reid has yet to update us with what he has in store for his own staff, he spoke to Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer about how Childress will fit with head coach Pat Shurmur.

"Pat's a heck of a play-caller, and Brad's a heck of a play-caller, and I think that's a heck of a combination," Reid said. "Both of them can bounce things off of each other. That's what Brad did here with me, and that's what Pat did here with me. So, whether I was calling the plays or they were calling the plays, we had an open communication where we could talk and make the best of whatever situation there was."

The three "heck of a" references in one sentence may be a record - even for Reid.

"You hire guys that are driven and smart, and both of them fall under that category," Reid said. "Both of them have a great work ethic, and they understand the game, and they have a whole lot of football smarts. They're smart guys away from the football field, too, but they really know the game."

As for Reid's silence in Philadelphia, I don't have a big problem with it. If he doesn't have his staff in place yet and is still trying to get things figured out, why call a press conference and say nothing? That would only draw more criticism. I'm not saying he's going to unveil some master plan in the end, but it's never been Reid's M.O. to update the media and the public with what he's doing behind the scenes. Not sure why anyone's expecting him to start now.

REID ON FOURTH DOWN

Jim Armstrong recently wrote a piece for Football Outsiders, which measured how aggressive coaches were on fourth down last season.

He uses a metric called Aggressiveness Index. Here's the definition:

To compute AI, we analyzed fourth-down decisions when the offense was in the opponent's territory, where a coach's tendencies were most distinguished from his peers. We also excluded obvious catch-up situations: Third quarter, trailing by 15 or more points; Fourth quarter, trailing by 9 or more points; Last five minutes of the game, trailing by any amount. AI measures how often a coach attempted a fourth-down conversion compared to the league averages in similar situations, based on the field position and the distance needed for a first down.

In 2011, Reid was the 12th-most aggressive coach in the league, going for it on nine of the 46 situations described above. Among the most aggressive coaches were Steve Spagnuolo, Jim Harbaugh, Mike Smith and Sean Payton. Ron Rivera, John Fox, Leslie Frazier and Rex Ryan were among the least aggressive.

The Aggressiveness Index dates back to 1992. In that time, Reid has been the least aggressive coach in the NFL. Mike Holmgren, Mike Tomlin and Rex Ryan are also near the bottom.

Guess who's the most aggressive? Rich Kotite.

Bill Belichick, Smith and George Seifert are also near the top.

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