IS TALKIN' SOUL WITH DONOVAN MORGAN
Eagles defensive end Jason Babin, on his way to his second consecutive Pro Bowl, weighed in on the Juan Castillo situation during an interview with Yahoo's Shutdown Corner.
Like many around the Eagles, he pointed to the improvement at the end of the season rather than the hole that the team dug for itself by blowing those fourth-quarter leads.
"Early on, Castillo was more or less a transition, when you go from offensive line coach to coordinator, you're doing more than just coaching; you're creating a style, a system," Babin said. "So that can take time. It took a little longer to work out than we would have liked and I'm sure he would have liked. I think there was a lot of growing going on and that's what makes him good as a coach. He listened, we listened — we all learned."
Babin also said the players fully expected Andy Reid to return as coach.
"None of us saw it going any other way and we expected coach Reid back, that was the player perspective," he said. "We weren't on the roller coaster of the media, the fans."
Babin said the Eagles went from "ok to friggin good" at the end of the season and despite the disappointment, the onus is the on the players, not the coaches.
"I think we found answers on both sides of the ball, answers we can take to next year," he said. "We had the ability, the talent, everything was there. You can't get mad at the coaches. We went out there and just didn't play that well. Could we have gotten it done? Absolutely. I feel we can do better as we get ready for this next season."
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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