Opening remarks:“It’s good to be back. I thought it was very important that I took a little time and had the chance to spend the time with my family. On behalf of my family and myself, there was a great outpouring from fans and friends and colleagues around the country, and a tremendous amount of support right here in Philadelphia, and we appreciated that. Obviously, this is a pending legal matter and I won’t be able to comment on anything. Even if I chose to, I can’t go in that direction. I would just like you to respect that for right now. If we could move on, I know a lot of you have football questions. If we could move in that direction, I’d appreciate it. For those of you that are new in this room, again, please respect the fact that I can’t address the other matters.”
On how he and his family are doing:“We’re doing well. We’re working through this.”
On whether he ever considered walking away from the job:“Well, I’ll tell you this. Family obviously is the most important thing in my life. So, at that time, and really at all times, that is it. That’s the most important thing. So, to say ‘walking away’, I can’t say that it doesn’t cross your mind, but I knew I needed to take some time and make sure I addressed the issue there.”
On how he has reconciled his family life with his football life:
“The organization, [owner] Jeff Lurie, [president] Joe Banner, and Christina Lurie, have just been awesome with their support. Really, none of this would have been possible to do here without their support. And then, on the other side of that, I’ve also had great support from my coaches, [general manager] Tom Heckert, his crew in the personnel department making sure things were still running at a very high level here. So, that’s been important. It allowed me to do what I needed to do at home. Do you go back and re-evaluate things? Yeah, I would tell you that you do. You go back and look at things.”
On whether he has any advice he can give to people who have found themselves in similar types of circumstances:
“I can’t get into all that, not at this time. There’ll be a time and a place for that. But, I will tell you that family is very important. That’s #1 in our lives at the Reid house.”
On whether he likes what has gone on so far with the team in free agency:
“I do. I like some of the moves we made. We made some staff changes. We brought in a couple of players here that I think will help us. Obviously, we’re continuing to look at the free agent market and trying to better ourselves at all positions if possible. On the other hand, I feel that we’ve got a pretty good football team coming back. Then, we’re attacking the draft likewise as we still work on the free agency part of it.”
On whether he accomplished what he wanted to accomplish in his time away:“Yeah, I thought it was very productive. But again, I can’t get into all that. But, I’m sitting here before you, so it wasn’t something that I was given a time limit on or anything else. I thought we were in the right place. I just wanted to make sure we took care of that.”
On what he was feeling when he got the call about his sons on January 30th:“I just don’t want to go in that direction. If we can go back to the football questions, I’d like to do that please.”
On what is on his plate right now football wise:
“Free agency, obviously, and the draft. Those are the things that we’re concentrating on. And the coaches have gone through and done a great job with the scheme evaluation. They finalized that and that’ll help us as we get ready for the minicamps.”
On how much his situation will inhibit what he has to do as a football coach:
“I don’t think it will. The thing I think you do is you turn the situation around and you make it as much of a positive as you can to say that it strengthens you in both areas, both as a father and as a coach.”
On whether the door is open if he needed to take another leave of absence down the road:“I’m not going to get into that. I’m going to take it here. It’s all football right now. Let’s kind of keep it going in that direction.”
On what he was able to do as a coach the last month:“I was able to stay up on the personnel [decisions]. I have a projector that I can look at film, so I was able to do that and evaluate. Tom did a great job of guiding me in the right direction with the players. He and Joe and [vice president of football administration] Howie [Roseman] work very close together with the other part of it.”
On whether he was less involved than he normally is:“Yeah, I spent a lot of time with the family that I’m normally here. But, at the same time, I don’t think I completely shortchanged the process here.”
On what he does to stay focused and get the team ready:“You do just what you said. You focus in on the job at hand and you take care of business. That’s why I’m back here.”
On how he devotes all his attention to the team with his family issues:“You balance it out. You balance it out and you go forward.”
On what convinced him to not walk away from the job:“This is the thing. I needed time to situate some things out and spend time with the family. I didn’t get to that point where I was ready to walk away. I just needed time to make sure that I focused on the things that I think are the most important. I was able to do that with the last few weeks.”
On what he has learned about a work/life balance:“Obviously, you spend time with family and you spend time with work. I think we all do that. It’s important that you continue to do that and just make sure that there’s quality time involved for both.”
On how his son, Garrett, is doing:
“I can’t go into all that, thank you.”
On why he chose this time to address the media:“I know that you guys have, obviously, been wanting to know. I’ll keep you updated. I’ve always felt that I’ve shot you as straight as I can and been as up front with you as I can. I thought this was a good time to do that.”
On whether he can spend less time here and still be as effective of a coach:
“I really haven’t even gone there. I haven’t gone there with that. I’m excited to be back and that’s where I’ll leave it, and we’ll see how things work down the road.”
On whether his workload will be lessened following his return:“No, not necessarily.”
On whether this team is a better football team now than it was at the end of the 2006 season:
“I think we’ve added quality players. We have a chance to be. I always tell you that every year is different. It’s no different from this year. It’s important how the guys gel during the mini camps and during training camp.”
On whether newly signed DT Montae Reagor underwent any vision tests prior to his signing:
“We brought him in and had him visit with a few different doctors. We did check all that out, the vision part of it. He had been through quite a severe accident, but he’s doing well and he should be fine.”
On how the interactions between he, President Joe Banner, and general manager Tom Heckert went during his leave:
“It was both. We communicated every day. They did a great job, both the fellows you mentioned and a lot of the other guys, keeping me abreast of the things going on here. Again, that’s what this is all about. It was the team work part of it. Everybody pulled together and I’m very thankful for that.”
On what makes the sacrifices he’s made to coach in the NFL worthwhile:“It’s a great job. It’s a great city to coach in. I’ve been and seen quite a few things in the National Football League, and the opportunity to coach in Philadelphia is a special thing. Not every city is as passionate as Philadelphia is. There’s nothing like game day; there’s nothing like dealing with the quality of young men that you get to deal with, the opportunity to teach. Those are all very important and it’s a new experience every day coming to work, and that’s something you appreciate.”
On whether an experience like this teaches you who your true friends are:“Yeah, I believe that, but there are no negatives to that because the outpourings have been phenomenal, way more than I could have ever asked for or expected in a situation like this. That is very much appreciated.”
On whether he has any regrets over WR Donté Stallworth leaving and how that was handled:
“Donté is going to do a heck of a job. I have nothing but good things to say about Donté . He did a nice job for us this past year. I’m very excited about [WR Kevin] Curtis coming in and giving him an opportunity to win in this offense. He’s been one of three great receivers the Rams had. I liked him coming out of college and I like what he’s done with the Rams, and I expect him to take another step forward.”
On whether he feels personal guilt over what happened with his sons:“I’m not going to go into that. I work hard here, that’s part of the job, and I think that’s important. At the same time, you take a lot of pride in your work and take a lot of pride in being a father. There are going to be things that happen and I think that it’s important when something happens you hit it head on and do what you have to do when it deals with family.”
On whether his sons will be spending as much time with the team as in the past:“We’ll see how it goes. They enjoy football and I’m sure they’ll be around.”
On whether the time away has taught or changed him in any way:“It taught me how much I missed you guys [the media].”
On whether he feels his sons have been treated unfairly:“I’m not going to go into that, but no.”
On how he would handle a trial involving his sons if it came to that:“We’ll cross that when it happens.”
On whether this experience has changed him:“If I tell you after a loss or a win that I do a lot of thinking, I’m sure you can add that up for this. Yeah, you go back and think through a lot of things.”
The Phanatic Magazine continues its preseason coverage of the Phillies, profiling one player per day to get you set for the 2007 campaign. Our 35 straight days of Phillies coverage kicked off on February 25th, and will continue to roll until Opening Day on April 2nd. Then we will hand it over to Michael Rushton, who will provide an in-depth season preview before the first pitch is dealt. 
