Saints poach longtime Eagles coach Paganetti

Happy Wednesday! Today is an Eagles/Phillies/Union send.

In the email today:

• ⚜ Saints poach longtime Eagles coach Paganetti

• ⚖️ Nick Castellanos' agent has a fool for a client

• 🇺🇾 Union acquire striker Bruno Damiani in club-record spend

  • 📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

  • 📊 Poll

  • 🔗 Links

  • 📺 Coming Up

New Orleans Football's Nick Underhill reported Tuesday that Eagles run game specialist/assistant offensive line coach T.J. Paganetti is joining former Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore in NOLA.

Paganetti's official role with the Saints was not immediately specified.

The hiring comes on the heels of news that three separate Eagles assistant coaches are interviewing for coordinator positions with the Saints. Running backs coach Jemal Singleton and quarterbacks coach Doug Nussmeier are candidates for New Orleans offensive coordinator, while defensive backs coach Christian Parker is a candidate for defensive coordinator.

Underhill notes that Nussmeier is considered a favorite to land the Saints OC gig.

Paganetti, 35, joined the Eagles from the University of Oregon when Oregon's Chip Kelly landed the Eagles' head coaching job. His first role with the team was as an offensive analyst. Paganetti briefly returned to Oregon, but landed back with the Birds in 2017 as offensive quality control/assistant offensive line coach. He has worked in various roles with Eagles since then, including assistant running backs coach, run game specialist, assistant tight ends coach, and assistant offensive line coach.

Nick Castellanos signed a five-year, $100 million contract with the Phillies in the 2022 offseason. That sounded like an awful lot of money at the time. Subsequent years and contracts have made Castellanos’ deal seem mundane.

Three years in, Castellanos has made one All-Star appearance (in 2023) and had two other seasons with Wins Above Replacement under 1.0.

He’s quotable, at least.

Castellanos is locked into $20 million per this season and next. It’s an odd time for a 32-year-old outfielder coming off a very pedestrian year to start yapping about an extension or leaving, but then Castellanos definitely dances to his own drum, etc.

Also odd? Castellanos is leaving superagent Scott Boras so he can represent himself in future contract negotiations.

Take it from your humble correspondents: The old adage that the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client is 100% accurate.

Castellanos himself noted that he didn’t go to college. That’s not an obstacle to excelling at baseball. It’s problematic when you’re negotiating multi-million dollar terms.

Plus, as we heard in this podcast episode, agents don’t just negotiate their clients’ contracts — they play significant roles in their client’s lives after the deal is signed.

And that’s ultimately what Castellanos is giving up: Disinterested counsel when personally challenging moments present themselves, as they always do.

We wish Castellanos good luck with all that. His client, too.

We have not been shy about taking shots at the Philadelphia Union for their woeful 2024 season and the wrong-headed decision to fire the greatest manager in club history.

As you are reading this, it is well below freezing in Philadelphia, making it a very weird time to think about the Union’s season beginning. We’re less than two weeks from soccer in Chester, and the U had to do something to convince anyone to watch them.

And to their credit, they actually did something noteworthy. Granted, they couldn’t resist an already dated pun, but that’s the Union socials for you.

The Worldwide Leader’s string story has the basics.

The Union’s best striking options before this signing were 30-year-old Mikkel Uhre and 27-year-old Tai Baribo. The Union needed better at that position and appear to have it now.

Still, the timing of this signing was sub-optimal given that the man Damiani is more or less replacing scored in the UEFA Champions League last night.

Given the choice, real Union heads would never have let Carranza go in the first place. But with that door closed, it falls to Damiani to score enough goals to make Carranza’s departure less painful.

We’ll check back in with the Union as (if) developments warrant.

📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

On February 19, 2005, at the age of 40, Philly’s Bernard Hopkins successfully defended his middleweight title for the 20th consecutive time. 20 title defenses remains the middleweight record to this day.

Fresh off a victory over Oscar De La Hoya, Hopkins dominated Howard Eastman (the European middleweight champion) from first bell to last.

📊 Poll

Results from Tuesday:

🔗 Links

• 🤮 Villanova blew a 14-point lead en route to a seven-point loss at UConn.

• 💰️ Mets owner Steve Cohen admitted to being careless with money this offseason.

• 🕓️ The Sixers can run a backcourt of Ricky Council IV and Lonnie Walker IV if Nick Nurse has the courage to do the right thing.

• 🏀 Joel Embiid practiced.

• ⚽️ An MLS executive thinks the league will be preferred to the English Premier League in 30 years. (No it won’t. That’s unserious.)

📺 Coming Up

No games for the locals until February 20.

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

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