Jason Babin Acknowledges Early Struggles With Castillo Scheme

Jason Babin spoke with Yahoo! Sports this week about a number of things, but the one that really caught my eye was what he had to say about Juan Castillo. He did clearly say that the players, not the coaches truly deserve the blame for the problems last year, but he did acknowledge that things took longer to work out than anyone liked.

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. 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.

For me, this is one of those "no kidding" moments. Installing a new scheme with a slew of new players (half of the starting lineup) with no offseason or training camp would have been a incredibly hard task for experienced defense coordinator. For a guy in his first year? It's ridiculous.

And Juan doesn't deserve the blame for that. Reid does. He knew the situation and he made the decision anyway.

So with a full year under his belt, a full offseason and camp with players... Juan is going to be better next year. The question is whether he'll get better enough and as I said yesterday, will he get the help he needs to be successful?