Andy Reid Press Conference Highlights
By Spike Eskin
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Andy Reid spoke to the media for the first time since the season ended today, about everything from why it took so long for him to speak, to Steve Spagnuolo. Here are some highlights, let us know what you think in the comments.
On why it took so long after the season for him to speak to the media:
The press conference directly after the season, you have had no time to really put everything together. You guys were eager. You're doing a job. You're under pressure yourselves to make sure you're doing your job. So you're going to throw fastballs at me. And there's just a time where you're going to have to buy time and step back to give you the right answer. So I tried to do it a little bit different this year than I did it in the past years. I just didn't think that was a smooth transition into the offseason. I felt like if I step back, I could kind of analyze things and then present it to you in a better way.
On the changes to the coaching staff:
We were able to finalize the spot that was vacant on our staff by bringing Todd Bowles. I had a chance to evaluate the coaches and what we did as a team. Coming out of that I felt like both sides of the football and special teams we've got room to imrpove, a tremendous amount of room to improve. Starting with the defensive side, I know the obvious question among you was Juan Castillo and his situation. Juan will reman as the defensive coordinator. Todd will coach the secondary.
On the Steve Spagnuolo rumors:
Steve Spagnuolo I know was another topic, and I understand, he's a fine football coach. Steve and I are good friends. And we talked throughout the season, as we do every year. When Steve was released from the Rams I did offer him a spot here to coach, if he needed one. A place to land, with open arms. My feeling was if you can have two great coaches on defense, That's even better than just having Juan himself. That's about how far as it went there. We didn't talk about titles or anything else.
On the turnover problem last season:
On the offensive side, we need to make sure we take care of business with the turnovers. We had five games that we lost in the 4th quarter which is something that I wanted to focus on in the last few weeks. We're better than that. We need to make sure we dig in on that. I thought we made progress as the season went on.
Instead of "time's yours":
With that I'm going to leave the time to you.
On Jeff Lurie's assessment of the season:
I do know 8 and 8's not good enough. What he said I agree with. There's no different feeling on this end. As coaches and players, we're sitting here watching, and we don't like to watch. It's that simple. Even though we finished strong and hot and all that stuff it's not good enough. And every season as I've told you in the National Football League is different, and it wasn't good enough.
On whether he was ever going to move on from Juan Castillo:
I never really was at that point. I just stepped back and kind of evaluated that whole situation. It never really came down to that. That didn't even work into the equation. Juan was going to be there. As you know in this league titles are thrown all over the place. My feeling with Spags was that both those two together could be dynamite.
On how the defense developed:
I saw progress. I liked the schemed we were teaching them. I liked the way we were executing the schemes. You could tell the players were all in. There's some ex-players out here and they can vouch for this. If there's an issue and the coach doesn't know what he's talking about, the players will voice that opinion. The players were all in and they believed in Juan and the scheme he was doing. I think it ended up working the way we hoped it would work a little earlier and it didn't.
