IS LAMENTING OVER THE LATISSIMUS
For about 12 minutes there today, Jeffrey Lurie really had the NovaCare auditorium audience going. The chairman was mad as heck, and it sounded like he wasn't going to take it any more. Words like "unacceptable," "ludicrous," "unfathomable," and "frustrating" issued forth from the standup wooden podium, a different staging from the one Andy Reid uses for his news conferences, held in the same spot.
Then, in the 13th minute, Lurie made it clear he was sticking with Reid, that he felt a 14th season with Andy was the Eagles' best chance to bounce back and make the playoffs next season. But there apparently will be no contract talks, with two seasons left on Reid's latest deal. The chairman made it sound as if he gave his coach a stern talking-to at the end of the season, which he described as the most disappointing of Reid's tenure.
Lurie said defensive coordinator Juan Castillo's fate will be left up to Reid. Reading the Lurie tea leaves there was tricky -- on the one hand, he called Castillo an "incredibly impressive man," and hinted that it wasn't Castillo's fault that he might have been put in an impossible situation early in the season, trying to run a revamped defense with little offseason work and no pro training as a defensive coach. On the other hand, Lurie made official what has been hinted at -- that Reid had a whole list of Sean McDermott successors he went through before settling on Castillo. Lurie also cautioned against reading too much into the season-ending four-game win streak, calling it "fool's gold." Castillo seemed all but officially fired before his defense allowed just 46 points in the final four games.
Lurie made it clear that team president Joe Banner and general manager Howie Roseman will remain.
Reid is expected to speak to reporters later in the week. It will be interesting to see if he heeds Lurie's call to be less opaque and dismissive in his interactions with the media, an outgrowth of what Lurie said is Reid's protective nature toward his players.
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To read more from Lurie, click here.
Les
Bowen has covered the Eagles for the Daily News
since 2002.
Before that, he spent nearly 13 years covering the Flyers. It took Les
only a few seasons after the switch to figure out that there was no
penalty box at the Linc, and that the time really wasn't his, despite
what Andy Reid kept saying. Les came to Philadelphia and the Daily News
from Charlotte in 1983. In the intervening years, he has pretty much
lost track of NASCAR, and his accent. He, his wife Barbara, and their
two sons live in Haddon Township, New Jersey.
E-mail Les at bowenl@phillynews.com
and follow
him on Twitter.
Paul
Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982.
He has spent most of his nearly 3 decades with the paper covering the
Eagles and pro football. For the last 10 years, he’s been a
selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A native of Wilkes-Barre
and a graduate of Wilkes University, Domo started his career in Texas,
working first for the Midland Reporter-Telegram (1976-78), and then for
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas
Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually was
boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose 2 sports coats to
blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley,
a University of Oklahoma grad who still hasn’t gotten over
that Fiesta Bowl loss to Boise State 5 years ago, have 2 terrific
daughters -- Allison, 28, who is an attorney in South Jersey, and Amy,
25, who works in administration for a professional baseball team.
E-mail Domo at PDomo@aol.com and follow
him on Twitter.
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