Questions are never as simple as they seem when you understand the complications of a football game. This isn't rocket science, but it does require a coach communicating his intentions to his 11 players with the idea of defeating a coach and his 11 players on the other side of the ball on every single play in a game.
There are, in other words, a lot of pieces that factor into the question, and the answer.
So let's start there, with that very idea, that to make it work, to make it better, everyone needs to be on the same page. How will the defense improve?
"One thing you have to understand," said Castillo, "is that they're going to know what we're doing from the very start."
That wasn't the case last year as the Eagles turned over their coaching staff, changed their defensive scheme, brought in a bunch of new starters and then hoped it would be good enough to win early in 2011 and then mesh late in the season as the Eagles were making their playoff run.
Well, the defense got a whole lot better, but there was no playoff run. A defense that early in the season played really well in spots and really poorly at other times put it all together for Castillo, the first-time defensive coach in the NFL, and the first-time defensive coordinator ever. The Eagles permitted just 11.5 points per game in the final month of the season, attacking offenses with creative blitzes and a ball-hawking mentality.
It was too little, too late for a team that had such huge expectations before the opening kickoff of the season, and the 8-8 crash set off alarms for everyone -- the fans, the organization, everyone.
How in the world could the Eagles make all of these changes and then miss the playoffs?
It's a question the decision makers here have asked themselves 10,000 times in the last few months. And instead of ripping it all apart and starting from the ground up, the Eagles are going to keep major pieces in place and try to get back on track that way.
So that means Castillo stays, after Eagles Nation spent a month wondering if he would be around to see it through to Year 2 as the defensive boss.
The coaching staff, as you know, is complete. The Eagles hired highly respected and highly accomplished coach Todd Bowles to oversee the secondary, and they march onward and, hopefully, upward, with the coaching staff in place.
Circling back to the real question, the one that matters the most moving into 2012, is this: How does the defense improve? Familiarity with Castillo's scheme, different from the one Sean McDermott ran for two seasons after Jim Johnson's death, is one way. It isn't the only way, though. Nobody is foolish enough to think that the Eagles are content with making that single change, the addition of Bowles, to a defense that clearly had some holes beyond the X's and O's last season.
The Eagles need more players on defense. They need the linebackers to be better and they need the secondary to play better. They need the defensive line to continue to apply pressure to the quarterback, with perhaps a smidgen better play against the run.
There is no way you can say that all the Eagles need is A. A new middle linebacker; B. A better safety; or C. A run-stuffing defensive tackle and everything will be fine on defense. All three together, maybe. But I don't see any Patrick Willises or Ed Reeds or Vince Wilforks on the horizon. I don't buy into the theory of free agency answering all of the questions for the defense, because history says free agency isn't like that. The Eagles were smart in their signings of defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins, defensive end Jason Babin and cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha last summer, but teams that rely too much on free agency generally are burned in the end.
As for the draft, I don't know enough about the prospects. There are good players out there, as is always the case. How long it takes for those players to assimilate to the NFL game is always a guesstimate. I'm not sure there is a middle linebacker, for example, who is going to step right into an NFL lineup and star right away. But I also don't know that there *isn't *a player like that, either.
I do know that the defense that ended the season was pretty darn good. I understand that the Eagles went 4-0 against offenses that struggled to score points, but I also know that the Dolphins were 4-1 in their previous five games before playing the Eagles, the Jets were 8-5 and on the road to the playoffs, the Cowboys played most of their starters the entire game (quarterback Tony Romo wasn't taken out of the game, he was knocked out by a Babin hit) and that Washington had played well offensively leading into the season finale with Rex Grossman at quarterback.
And I know that the Eagles had their troubles defensively early in the season against quarterbacks like Alex Smith and Ryan Fitzpatrick and John Skelton and Tarvaris Jackson, so it kind of goes both ways. The defense, everyone agrees, improved a whole lot during 2011.
To improve the defense, and to really, really reach the championship-caliber level, the Eagles need a combination of things to come together. They need the scheme to improve, as is the challenge for every coaching staff every season. They need improvement from the players on the current roster, particularly the large group of key defenders who can now be labeled young veterans, players like Kurt Coleman, Nate Allen, Jaiquawn Jarrett, Curtis Marsh, Brian Rolle, Jamar Chaney, Casey Matthews, etc.
They need to add pieces to the defense in the form of players who are ready to go, ready to step in and contribute.
Most of all, they need to believe in each other, buy into the system, and want to play physical, aggressive, fundamentally-sound football. It was clear early in 2011 that the veterans hadn't quite accepted what Castillo was selling them. The innate trust hadn't been developed and cemented. In bits and pieces we saw it, like in the wins over Washington, Dallas and the Giants, and in the second and third quarters in Atlanta and then, for sure, in the final month of the season when it was too late to resurrect the postseason plans.
Castillo has a lot to prove and he knows it. He's a proud man, a smart guy and an outstanding football coach whom the Eagles are counting on to be a great defensive coordinator in 2012. A lot is riding on the defense, as it is with an offense that does not escape blame for the shortcomings in 2011.
How does the defense improve? It is the question the Eagles must answer on a daily basis now that the coaching staff is in place and the measuring stick, the start of the regular season, creeps ever closer.
