If you fire a head coach or defensive coordinator mid-season, then the season is all but over. By the time a gm or owner gets to firing a coach mid-season you’ve admitted you let a better candidate get a job somewhere else, you have wasted hours of practice time under that inadequate coach and you signal to fans and league: they’ve conceded they had it all wrong.

So, I think firing Juan Castillo was a mistake (maybe play calling needed to go to another coach until the off season) and I also think fans who want to fire Andy Reid need to give it a rest. Andy Reid walking out unemployed after the game tonight if we lose badly to the New Orleans Saints (which I believe we will) will not fix anything. Week 16, right after the game is done is when a guy can be let go. Then a coaching search can begin in earnest. Whatever happens now, we should suffer it.

If the Eagles do continue to stink (and I picked them to be 7-9 this season so I think they will), I don’t want Gruden, Cowher, Dungy, Payton, Parcells or anyone else who has coached a group of men to hoist the Lombardi trophy to be a coach for the Eagles. No coach has won a super bowl as a head coach at two different franchises. In addition, time away from the game doesn’t make you a better coach. The Eagles have got to find a coordinator somewhere and promote him. Whoever that may be, he may not be better than Andy Reid, but Reid doesn’t seem to be the perennial contender builder that he was from 2000 through to 2008. It may be too much control, too many sub par player performances, locker room leadership or too little organizational awareness or something else, but something just seems wrong every time they take the field.