Bills fire OL Coach Juan Castillo

[SlimShady'sSpaceForce]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

Bye Felicia.

is that the cede word for being out in the Sin Bin?

 

[GG]

34 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

That's absolutely true, but flip it around.  The reason Beane was able to move up 8 spots in the draft with Glenn, was because a true starting NFL LT simply does not become available very often, so he was valuable as a trade target.  Can we agree that Beane could have achieved the same thing in different ways?  He chose to do it this way, but it was a loss to the team and weakened the line, especially with Wood's retirement.

 

 

 

We can go round and round on this, but it was clear from day 1 that Beane's priority was to land one of the top QBs and he was not going to get there without moving into Top 5-10.   That meant giving up a bunch of assets, that coupled with Wood's retirement and Richie's meltdowns put them in a short-term hole at OL.

 

McBeane's decision wasn't a question for 2018, but for the longer term state of the franchise. 

 

Are they better off with Josh Allen, and whatever the OL will look like going into this summer, or with Lamar Jackson and Cordy Glenn, plus what the rest of the OL would have looked like this summer?

[Ethan in Cleveland]

Love Castillo calling out Beane. The line issues are on Beane. He drafted a first round QB and surrounded him with one of the worst lines in the NFL. I don't know if Castillo can coach or not and neither does anyone on this board. But most of us can tell the talent level fell off greatly under Beane. He overpaid and spent money on Star, Ivory, and Murphy - all of which could have been user to keep Richie or find better players 

Now arguing against Castillo's comments is the fact Groy and Miller regressed terribly under his coaching and Ducasse was at best inconsistent and never played above average.

[hemma]

Makes sense to me if Daboll has a say in the OL coach.

Daboll tailors each weeks game plan to the opponent and it sounds to me like Castillo either wasn’t flexible enough to work with those marching orders or not gifted enough to keep pace.  End result was not good and he needed to go.

 

Need a guy that fits with Daboll, not the other way around.

[Gugny]

39 minutes ago, Ethan in Portland said:

Love Castillo calling out Beane. The line issues are on Beane. He drafted a first round QB and surrounded him with one of the worst lines in the NFL. I don't know if Castillo can coach or not and neither does anyone on this board. But most of us can tell the talent level fell off greatly under Beane. He overpaid and spent money on Star, Ivory, and Murphy - all of which could have been user to keep Richie or find better players 

Now arguing against Castillo's comments is the fact Groy and Miller regressed terribly under his coaching and Ducasse was at best inconsistent and never played above average.

 

I'm sure you're very upset, Zaida, but you and Juan will be just fine.

[Saint Doug]

Castillo should have kept his mouth shut.  That interview was bordering on unprofessional.

 

The very first line about him coming here to retire and the firing coming as a surprise was extremely telling.  He basically came to slide on through into retirement knowing McD wouldn't dare fire him.

 

And I don't really care about how many individual players he has developed in the past.  That's not the OL coaches job.  Last I checked, there are 5 guys playing the OL and each of them need to act as one unit.  They are supposed to communicate and compensate for each other's weaknesses.  A great coach helps this out in a big way by adjusting his scheme to his players abilities to make the unit larger than the sum of its parts.  Castillo did none of that and this is why he's now spouting sour grapes.

[hondo in seattle]

4 hours ago, GG said:

 

That's basically how he came across.   

 

Piecing together bits of stories about Castillo is that he probably is a very good teacher of technique who can develop players, but is an awful coach to put in an effective blocking scheme for the line that works with the OC's design.   In a perfect world, he'd be demoted to Asst OL coach who works with players individually, and stays away from game designs.

 

I was about to post something very similar.  Castillo was adamant that he knows how to develop players.  Both McD and Beane said the OL was out of sync.  They might all be telling accurate stories.  

 

 

 

 

[ndirish1978]

I'm starting to get annoyed that Crossman is still on the team.

[Mr. WEO]

Bills top 10 rushing offense this year....they ran for 33 yards less than last year, when they were ranked 6th.

 

What's that you say?  Much of those yards came from the mobile, athletic QB?  True, but I don't hear anyone knocking the #2 rushing offense in the NFL this season for the same thing..

[iinii]

3 hours ago, hemma said:

Makes sense to me if Daboll has a say in the OL coach.

Daboll tailors each weeks game plan to the opponent and it sounds to me like Castillo either wasn’t flexible enough to work with those marching orders or not gifted enough to keep pace.  End result was not good and he needed to go.

 

Need a guy that fits with Daboll, not the other way around.

Maybe the players weren’t gifted enough to execute Daboll’s plan either no matter who coached them. 

[JohnC]

6 hours ago, ScottLaw said:

He had a nagging foot injury that required surgery.

 

He played in 13 of 16 games this past year.

 

If I am GM I don't rush to trade a top tier LT when healthy. I would've rather traded a future unknown draft pick than an established very good NFL tackle on a team with several offensive line holes. But that's just me.? 

 

These guys felt they needed to rebuild pretty much the entire roster. Even riding themselves of good NFL players. They still haven't done a sufficient job replacing those players. 

 

 

I consider Cordy Glenn to be a good player. However, the trading of Glenn to Cincinnati to move up in that draft helped enable us to draft Josh Allen. I'll take that deal every time. As it stands the Bills have their franchise qb (something they haven't had in nearly a quarter of a century) and they enter this draft with a full complement of draft picks and a large amount of cap space to work with. There certainly was short-term pain with the loss of Cordy but in the long run it unquestionably worked out for us. 

 

You can come up with your mind-bending fanciful deals to get our qb. But making fanciful deals doesn't bring fruition to deals in the real world. There is no question that losing Glenn hurt us on the line this season. But because of that deal we were in position to draft Allen. Because of it this franchise is better off now and in the future. You may not be aware of it but in the real world when making deals you give up something worthwhile to get something even more worthwhile.  

[Hapless Bills Fan]

3 hours ago, GG said:

 

We can go round and round on this, but it was clear from day 1 that Beane's priority was to land one of the top QBs and he was not going to get there without moving into Top 5-10.   That meant giving up a bunch of assets, that coupled with Wood's retirement and Richie's meltdowns put them in a short-term hole at OL.

 

McBeane's decision wasn't a question for 2018, but for the longer term state of the franchise. 

 

Are they better off with Josh Allen, and whatever the OL will look like going into this summer, or with Lamar Jackson and Cordy Glenn, plus what the rest of the OL would have looked like this summer?

 

We agree on your first sentence.  Correct.   I'm just getting a bit irked by the "we had to trade Cordy Glenn or we couldn't have drafted Josh Allen" narrative.   No, we had to give trade-partner teams a substantial resource, but our starting LT was not the only choice.  Beane had the ammo to move up to #12 without Glenn.  It isn't a case of "Josh Allen and the current OL" vs "a different rookie and Cordy Glenn".  Beane chose to use Glenn vs. some of the other strategies he could have employed such as dipping into this year's draft picks.  Put another way, he valued next year's picks and his other picks above our 6 year starting LT, who seemed to be back to form this year after his surgery, and he did so when he knew we had already lost our starting center.

 

Whether that was a smart idea or not remains to be seen according to what talent he Beane comes from a team that, historically, has not put a huge value on the OL.  They've used 2-1st round picks on an OT in the last 18 years, one which gave them a decade of stability at LT, one of which washed out in 3 years due to injury.  They invested 3 2nd round picks and a 3rd round pick in the last decade.  In a stunning development this year, Newton had a career-high completion percentage and a career low number of sacks.  Apparently he did that with off-the-street signings at LT and LG, but 2nd and 3rd round picks on the rest of the line. 

 

So it can be done, but there has to be appropriate talent e v a l and a committment to keep bringing guys in until you land two.

 

 

30 minutes ago, iinii said:

Maybe the players weren’t gifted enough to execute Daboll’s plan either no matter who coached them. 

 

That's a really, really good question right now, isn't it?  Who was designing the OL scheme?

I saw plenty of plays especially early in the season where our guys were being asked to do things they apparently just couldn't do.  Less so as the season wore on but still there in the final game.

 

Is that Daboll, or is that Castillo?  I didn't do the same deep-dive into the run blocking last year.  I remember thinking there was an awful lot of confusion about assignments on the line, and of course our rush YPA fell off across the board, which might say Castillo had something to do with it.  But this year was worse.

 

Anyone else got some gouge?

[RochesterRob]

5 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

We agree on your first sentence.  Correct.   I'm just getting a bit irked by the "we had to trade Cordy Glenn or we couldn't have drafted Josh Allen" narrative.   No, we had to give trade-partner teams a substantial resource, but our starting LT was not the only choice.  Beane had the ammo to move up to #12 without Glenn.  It isn't a case of "Josh Allen and the current OL" vs "a different rookie and Cordy Glenn".  Beane chose to use Glenn vs. some of the other strategies he could have employed such as dipping into this year's draft picks.  Put another way, he valued next year's picks and his other picks above our 6 year starting LT, who seemed to be back to form this year after his surgery, and he did so when he knew we had already lost our starting center.

 

Whether that was a smart idea or not remains to be seen according to what talent he Beane comes from a team that, historically, has not put a huge value on the OL.  They've used 2-1st round picks on an OT in the last 18 years, one which gave them a decade of stability at LT, one of which washed out in 3 years due to injury.  They invested 3 2nd round picks and a 3rd round pick in the last decade.  In a stunning development this year, Newton had a career-high completion percentage and a career low number of sacks.  Apparently he did that with off-the-street signings at LT and LG, but 2nd and 3rd round picks on the rest of the line. 

 

So it can be done, but there has to be appropriate talent e v a l and a committment to keep bringing guys in until you land two.

 

 

 

That's a really, really good question right now, isn't it?  Who was designing the OL scheme?

I saw plenty of plays especially early in the season where our guys were being asked to do things they apparently just couldn't do.  Less so as the season wore on but still there in the final game.

 

Is that Daboll, or is that Castillo?  I didn't do the same deep-dive into the run blocking last year.  I remember thinking there was an awful lot of confusion about assignments on the line, and of course our rush YPA fell off across the board, which might say Castillo had something to do with it.  But this year was worse.

 

Anyone else got some gouge?

  I think that the bottom line with Glenn was even though he was not a top 5 LT he was going to be due a larger contract than what Beane wanted to hand out.  I still think that at least in secret Beane wanted to bottom out in 2017 so the cost to get Allen may not have included moving Glenn if that had happened but became water under the bridge leading up to the 2018 draft.  

[TheFunPolice]

man...

 

after reading the article I say hire the man back!

[Hapless Bills Fan]

2 hours ago, ndirish1978 said:

I'm starting to get annoyed that Crossman is still on the team.

 

Patience, Griselda

[thebandit27]

3 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

Bills top 10 rushing offense this year....they ran for 33 yards less than last year, when they were ranked 6th.

 

What's that you say?  Much of those yards came from the mobile, athletic QB?  True, but I don't hear anyone knocking the #2 rushing offense in the NFL this season for the same thing..

 

Only 6 teams had a lower YPC than Buffalo's 4.2, and that's factoring in Allen's 631 yards on 89 carries (average of 7.1).

 

That's a pretty horrendous run game.

Edited January 3, 2019 by thebandit27

[BillyWhiteShows]

I feel kind of sorry for Juan, because he sounds pretty bummed he was fired.  He goes to great lengths to defend himself, but in doing so, I also don’t feel he’s being completely honest.  He claims he develops players,  but he really didn’t do anything of note this season.

 

Also Juan blamed some of the sack on Allen, which was the case early in the year but not toward the end.  

 

He also failed to address the immense struggles in the running game, which you know....is his main responsibility as run game Coordinator.  

 

He also didn’t mention the fact that the offensive line was worse in 2017 under his blocking scheme, than in 2016

 

Still I hope Castillo lands on his feet;

https://buffalonews.com/2019/01/02/buffalo-bills-juan-castillo-dion-dawkins-eric-wood-richie-incognito-nfl/

Edited January 3, 2019 by BillyWhiteShows

[RiotAct]

“I’m a PEOPLE PERSON, *****!!!”

[GoBills808]

Kinda hate to see a guy make that many excuses after getting let go. 

[Punching Bag]

On 1/2/2019 at 9:56 AM, MrEpsYtown said:

 

I agree with this, though I thought Sanjay Lal was pretty good. Robiskie knows what he is doing and has been excellent in career developing receivers. I don't know that a reciever coach can really help a guy catch better or be faster. There just isn't much talent in that room. 

 

 

Sanjay Lal was a great WR coach.  It was part of issue with Coach McD dumping all of the scouts and all of the coaches except ST Coordinator.