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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


An Eagle Among Us

By going from sleeping in his car to manning the NFL sidelines, Juan Castillo has proven that a strong work ethic can pay off.
by: Richard Scott
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At what point do the perceptions disappear and give way to reality? At what point do people in the football business, as well as the media and the fans, stop looking at the outside, at the skin color, at the last name, at the perception that his place in the world must be the result of a handout, a favor or a quota?

What would it take to change the assumptions and move on to the facts?

Would a man have to grow up in a small Texas town as the son of immigrants who spoke no English? Would he have to lose his father at age six and be raised by a mother who worked two jobs to make ends meet?

Would a man have to walk on to a Division II football program and go on to play pro football? Would he have to work as an assistant for 12 years in high school and Division II and send four Division II players directly to the NFL?

Would he have to sleep in his car on recruiting trips so he could find players? Would he have to sleep in his car again and spend his own money on visits to coaches at bigger programs so he could learn all he could about the game? Would he have to make a daily habit of being the first coach on the field and the last one off?

Would he have to suffer a broken leg in a hit-and-run accident and be back at work the next day, coaching in a cast? Would he have to continue to work with a binder permeating a bad odor because it was loaded with priceless football information accumulated over the years and the miles?

How many nights would he have to sleep in his office during the season? Is three enough? How long would he have to make it in the NFL before someone decided to move beyond the perceptions about his ethnicity and focus on who he is as a coach? As a husband and father? As a man? How about 10?

What else would Juan Castillo have to prove to earn your respect?

“When people want to know how I got here, they ask ‘did somebody give you something? Did you know someone?’” says Castillo, 44. “I worked my butt off. I studied hard and I taught my players and then I studied with good people.

“Maybe being a minority helped me get noticed but I’ll tell you one thing: if I wasn’t a good coach I wouldn’t still be here. You know how many minority offensive line coaches there are in the NFL? Two that I know of. Me and a guy in Dallas (George Warhop).”

The fact is, Castillo is in the NFL because he belongs there. The reality is that he is entering his 10th season with the Eagles and his seventh as the club’s offensive line coach. Castillo was one of four members of former coach Ray Rhodes’ staff to be retained by head coach Andy Reid in 1999. He’s also one of four coaches of Hispanic descent in the NFL.

“He’s an inspiration to anybody, not just Hispanics, but to anybody who has goals,” says Ron Harms, Castillo’s former coach and boss at Texas A&M-Kingsville. “I may have hired him for a college job, but Juan’s a self-made man and any success he has, the credit belongs to him and his family.”

Castillo’s success story starts with family, with parents Gregorio and Juanita Castillo who came to the United States as teenagers and did the best they could to raise their three children in the barrio of Post Isabel, Texas. Juanita’s job became even more challenging when her husband, who worked as a shrimper, died at sea when Juan was in the sixth grade.

“My dad was gone all the time anyway,” says Castillo, the oldest child. “Shrimpers work really hard, so he’d be gone for a month and come home for a week, so I didn’t really get to spend much time with him or do things. I guess that’s why I still try to spend as much time as I can with my three boys now.”

Juanita Castillo never attended school and didn’t speak any English but it didn’t keep her from working long hours as a maid to keep her family fed.

“Sometimes my mother worked two jobs to make ends meet,” Castillo says. “She never remarried and always sacrificed for her children. As you grow older, you appreciate things like that.”

Between his mother’s sacrifice and the lessons he learned at home, at school and on the football field, Castillo became the first person in his family to graduate from high school. He also became the first to attend college when he walked on at Texas A&I (now Texas A&M-Kingsville), where he eventually earned a scholarship and played linebacker.

“The same kind of thing that makes him successful as a person made him a good player,” Harms says. “He had a tremendous work ethic.”

Castillo wasn’t a big-time prospect, but he was tough and resilient enough to earn a free agent tryout with the Houston Oilers and spend two seasons on and off the roster of the USFL’s San Antonio Gunslingers as a backup and special teams player. He didn’t play much, but he learned valuable lessons about blitz packages from defensive coaches Tim Marcum and Jim Bates that he still applies to his blitz protections.

When his playing career came to an end coaching was a natural progression for Castillo. He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at his alma mater and spent 1986-89 on the staff at Kingsville High School when he came to a critical fork in the road. Texas Tech coach Spike Dykes had offered him a chance to be a graduate assistant under defensive assistant coach John Paul Young, but Harms had promised Castillo the next opening on his staff, knowing full well it might be the offensive line job. Castillo and his young wife Zaida were packing to move to Lubbock when Harms came to his house to offer him a full-time job.

“He had absolutely no experience on offense,” Harms says. “That’s a pretty big gamble for a coach to take at the college level but I never did think it was a gamble. I knew he would work hard enough to do a good job.”

Castillo wasn’t so sure he could coach the offensive line, but he decided to give the job a chance. He didn’t know it at the time, but coaching the offensive line was a perfect fit for a coach who wanted to work hard and teach fundamentals with a bunch of guys who rarely got any recognition for their efforts.

“To me, a Hispanic kid from Port Isabel, I felt like I was in the big time,” Castillo says.

During his five seasons at Texas A&M-Kingsville, Castillo produced four players who went on to play in the NFL: Jorge Diaz, an undrafted free agent who spent five seasons in NFL; Earl Dotson, who won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers and retired in 2003 after 10 seasons; and Jermane Mayberry and Kevin Dogins, both who spent 2003 playing for Castillo in Philadelphia.

All four had the raw talent to make it to the NFL, but Castillo did his part to help show them the way.

“I didn’t really think about the NFL at all when I got there,” says Mayberry, who went from a kid born partially blind in one eye and searching for a way out of Floresville, Texas to a 1996 first-round NFL draft choice and a highly respected All-Pro. “We worked long, long hours. I don’t know if any team worked harder than we did. We ran incredible workouts, with tons of sprints. Plus we had the advantage of being down there in the South Texas heat. Fortunately, I had a great coach who pushed me and molded me and shaped me and helped me grow as a person and a player.”

Like his parents, Castillo wasn’t afraid to show up early, stay late and work hard in between to be the best he could be.

“Back then, they didn’t have the rules about how many hours you could work,” Castillo says. “Practice used to start at 4 o’clock and special teams started at 3:45, but my linemen started at 3 o’clock. From 3 to 4, all we did was pass block. We were primarily a run team so, once practice started, we were going to spend most of our time on the running game. But those guys learned how to pass block.

“Everybody would walk by our group like we were crazy. In the beginning they would say ‘coach, we’re really working,’ and I’d say, ‘yeah, but we’ve got to work harder.’ They didn’t understand at first but you’ve got to have that kind of work ethic to achieve anything special. And those guys believed it. They had a lot of confidence because they worked so hard. They would tell people on campus they were going to play in the NFL and people would look at them funny. But they did. People didn’t believe it, but those four guys still did it because they were willing to pay that price. When they got to NFL camps they were ready to work.”

Castillo’s own willingness to pay the price set an example time and time again for his players. When the Javelinas played in the 1994 Division II national championship game at the University of North Alabama in Florence, Ala., in rainy, windy weather and temperatures in the 30s, Castillo didn’t want his linemen worrying about the weather so he took the field in his shortsleeves.

“He never put anything on the entire game,” Harms says, laughing. “He’s an amazing guy.”

Castillo also did his own part by working overtime to become a better coach, no matter what the cost. Because of A&I’s limited recruiting budget he would often sleep in his car on extended recruiting visits. In the spring, when Harms budgeted just enough money for three nights and fours days to visit other coaching staffs, Castillo would take his visit the week before or after spring break and stretch less than a week’s worth of travel money over most of two weeks, just so he could visit more schools and spend more time with their offensive line coaches.

One of the coaches who befriended Castillo was longtime Notre Dame assistant Joe Moore.

“He’d always ask me where I was staying,” Castillo says. “I’d say something like ‘oh, I’m staying out there somewhere coach, I’m not sure the name of the place,’ because, really, I was sleeping in my car. He’d try to tell me about another place and I’d say I was fine. I’d come back the next day and he’d say ‘so what’s the name of the place where you’re staying?’ He finally called me on it and figured out I was sleeping in my car. That year I stayed with a G.A., and the next three years – here I am, this guy from A&I – I stayed at his house. He took care of me. It was unbelievable.

“The line coach from Buffalo, Tom Bresnahan, did the same thing for me. After the first year I visited him he’d tell me when his wife would be out of town and he’d invite me up and I’d stay there for three or four days and we would do nothing but talk football.

“I used to stop at LSU and see Pete Jenkins when he was coaching the d-line. I thought I was a pretty good line coach ‘til I met him. What a coach. That’s where it all started for me as far as being a teacher. Coach Jenkins was an excellent teacher and fundamentals were so important for him, and all those things have carried over for me.

“I also learned a lot from many Division II coaches. One of the best ones I know is Tom Pittman, the offensive coordinator at Albany State. I was making a call to try and help him get a job and a guy said ‘well I heard he’s just a recruiter’ because sometimes that’s the knock on black coaches. I just said, ‘coach, I’m coaching in the NFL and this guy is smarter than I am and taught me a lot of things that I use today.’

“That’s why I had enough knowledge to help my guys at A&I, because of guys like that who took the time to help me.”

Fortunately for Castillo, someone noticed. That someone was Ray Rhodes, the former Eagles and Packers head coach and current Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator who walked into his San Francisco 49ers office one morning to find a total stranger watching film.

At the time A&M-Kingsville was making a regular habit of sending players to the NFL, but none of those players were offensive linemen. When Harms made it a goal to send an offensive lineman to the NFL, he told Castillo to pick any coach he wanted to study and told him he would pay for the trip. Castillo picked veteran 49ers’ line coach Bob McKitrick, who welcomed Castillo with open arms.

“He even taught me a drop-back protection that I brought back to A&I,” Castillo says. “It was a West Coast protection and since we use the West Coast here (in Philadelphia) I still use that protection.”

After McKitrick left the office one night Castillo stayed all evening to watch film. When McKitrick arrived the next morning and needed to use his office, he sent Castillo to Rhodes’ office. When the two men started talking they learned they were both from Texas.

“The next thing you know coach Rhodes is giving me a clinic on defense,” Castillo says.

Castillo continued to grow by visiting a variety of coaches and also worked as a summer minority coaching intern for the Buffalo Bills (1992), Seattle Seahawks (1993) and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1994). Another big break came when a scout, John Fitzpatrick, noticed Dotson’s improvement over the course of a season. After predicting Dotson would be a possible free agent before the season, Fitzpatrick returned four months later and didn’t recognize Dotson.

“We’re using the drop-back protection from coach McKitrick and the inside-outside zone from coach Bresnahan, so all of a sudden Earl’s not on the ground like he was when we were in the option,” Castillo says. “John couldn’t believe it was Earl.”

Fitzpatrick not only invited Dotson to the NFL combine but also told Castillo if he could pay his own way to the combine he would let him sleep in his hotel room and work and eat at the combine. The combine also gave him a chance to re-connect with his favorite offensive line coaches, and Bresnahan let Castillo follow him around.

“On the last night John Fitzpatrick told me the last guy who slept on that couch is in the NFL,” Castillo says. “He told me ‘you’re going to coach in the NFL someday.’ I was shocked, but I also started feeling really good about things. Then Earl was drafted in the third round.”

Suddenly, NFL coaches were paying attention to Castillo, even though Division I-A coaches wouldn’t give him the time of day. Without even asking, his mentors would make calls for him, trying to get Castillo a Division I-A job. Despite help from one of his NFL mentors, one former Division I head coach wouldn’t even give him an interview. Castillo continued to visit with Bresnahan and McKitrick and added established line coaches Howard Mudd and Tony Wise to his list of mentors.

“It was awesome for my guys because I’d see all these techniques the coaches were teaching me and I could teach them to my guys,” Castillo says. “I was doing a combination of all those things they taught me and molding them to our players. I could use one way to help our guys but if it didn’t fit everyone I could do it another way. I didn’t know just one way. I learned several different ways to get the job done.

“That’s why I’m so blessed that they took me under their wing. And I never asked those guys for a job. Maybe that’s one reason why they let me hang around. A lot of guys just want to show how smart they are when they go to visit coaches and they just want someone to give them a job. Everybody wants to coach in the NFL, so you’re just another guy then. The only thing I asked for were tapes. I just wanted to learn.”

The closest he ever came to asking for a job was when he wrote Rhodes a letter two years before he became Philadelphia’s head coach.

“I always kept in touch with him because he was a Texas guy and he was always nice to me and he was really sharp, so I wrote him a note and said, ‘I know one day you’re going to be head coach. When that happens could you give me an opportunity to interview?’” Castillo recalls. “I ran into him soon after that and he told me he got the letter and if he ever got the job he would give me a chance.”

When Rhodes became an NFL head coach, he hired Castillo as a quality control assistant and reminded Castillo, “I told you I’d give you a chance.”

Castillo continued to work hard, serving under offensive coordinator Jon Gruden and offensive line coach Bill Callahan. When Gruden reminded Castillo that he made a habit of arriving at the office early in the morning, Castillo met the challenge by showing up at 4 a.m. on a regular basis. After two years, Castillo became the tight ends coach. When Gruden and Callahan left for Oakland, Rhodes promoted Castillo to offensive line coach.

“I used to sit in on Coach Callahan’s meetings and he would help me, and I decided, ‘man, this is what I want to do,’” Castillo says, “so coaching the line was a dream come true. I figured if I could turn players from A&I into pros, I could take the same caliber of players in the NFL and turn them into pretty good players.”

It took awhile, but Castillo eventually developed one of the NFL’s most solid, productive lines. Along the way he also earned the admiration and respect of his players and fellow coaches when he suffered a broken leg in a hit-and-run accident with a utility truck as he stepped out of the coaches’ office on the ground floor of Veterans Stadium. The day after his accident Castillo was back on the practice field, working on crutches. He spent the next eight weeks on crutches and also spent five nights a week sleeping in his office since he couldn’t drive.

On another occasion, a cat used the drop ceiling above Castillo’s stadium office as a litter box until the tiles caved in and the cat tumbled through the ceiling and landed on Castillo’s desk. Despite the smell, Castillo continued to use his irreplaceable binder of collected notes, techniques, fundamentals and other lessons he had accumulated throughout his career.

Castillo’s work ethic and resilience also paid off when the Eagles replaced Rhodes with current coach Andy Reid. After the front office fired the entire coaching staff and brought in a new head coach, Reid raised a few concerns among skeptics when he re-hired Castillo. Reid obviously knew what he was doing, because Castillo has taken a once uncertain line and built into one of the most solid units in the NFL. Under Castillo’s tutelage, three lineman earned their first Pro Bowl selections: tackle Thomas (2001 and 2002), tackle John Runyan (2002) and Mayberry (2002). This year, the Eagles will entrust their No. 1 draft choice, Shawn Andrews, to Castillo’s care.

The next logical step for Castillo would probably be a head coaching job at some level. He emerged as a candidate for the UTEP job last year and appeared to be a good choice, but the university instead hired veteran coach Mike Price just months after being fired by Alabama. Still, Castillo supporters know something else will come along.

“I could see him doing whatever he wants to do,” Eagles offensive coordinator Brad Childress says of Castillo. “He has a great work ethic. He’s going to outwork most people that he goes against. He’s going to do well at whatever he does.

“If I ever have to hire a line coach, I want him to be just like Juan Castillo. He’s thorough, he’s hard-working, and he’s able to get his players to play.”

As for Castillo, he’s too busy working and learning to worry about the next job.

“I know what it’s like to be at a small school and not have much, because Division II schools don’t have the money and facilities that the big-time schools have,” Castillo says. “The NFL is as big time as it gets, but I was never in a big-time program until I got here. This is the ultimate. Everybody’s trying to get up here. I never had the great facilities and resources like we have here, so what happens is you don’t forget. You stay hungry and you know how blessed you are. You keep doing all the things you did to get here.”

One of the things he will continue to do is work to improve the opportunities for Hispanics in the profession. Castillo, who remains fluent in Spanish, and his wife joined an NFL contingent to visit with President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush for a Cinco de Mayo Reception in the East Room of the White House.

“It’s a great opportunity for a lot of reasons,” Castillo says. “Just to say I’ve met the President, it’s kind of unbelievable. I’m just a normal person and it’s exciting that someone like me can be there. Hey, maybe there are people out there who will say, ‘He made it there, maybe I can be there some day’. If it means more hope for Hispanics, then it’s all worth it. I started just like all those people back in Texas.”

When Castillo starts to wonder if all the hard work is worth it, especially when he finds himself sleeping at the office three nights a week during the season, he thinks back to the reality of the sacrifices his mother and other Hispanics made to build a better life for their children.

“If she could do what she did for her children, my working these long hours is no big deal,” he said. “This is nothing, really. My mom taught me that everything is possible as long as you pay the price.

“If you work really hard and are productive – and that’s the key – good things happen and people will notice.”






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