Jonathan Gannon Changes Jobs
You know that joke we sports fans love to make whenever a team performs absolutely awful? Take [scapegoat of the game] and leave him on the tarmac! Don’t even let him on the plane! Leave him stranded in [location of his greatest failure]. The Eagles…actually did it?
Pretty much the day immediately after the Super Bowl in Arizona the coordinator of the Eagles defense, Jonathan Gannon, was announced to be interviewing for the Cardinals HC vacancy and after just one more day, got the job. He flew to Arizona as a super bowl hopeful, his defense shit the bed and was basically the reason the Chiefs managed their comeback, and then he gets abandoned in Arizona and gets the job there. I think that’s really funny. Now Gannon has to spend every day coaching the team that plays in the stadium his defense lost a super bowl in. You could say he’s gotten a head start on how to feel bad in Glendale.
Out of all the coaching moves this year, this one felt like the biggest mistake to many people. Usually, every year features a few laughers or questionable hires but this year seemed to actually be pretty solid overall, outside one notable exception. We’ll get to them. Let’s do our first impressions so we can look back on this post later and laugh about how right and wrong we were.
CARDINALS HC – JONATHAN GANNON
This, for obvious reasons, felt like the year’s biggest HC mistake. Gannon was a guy I saw Eagles fans whining about this year despite the Eagles success. The Cardinals pulled a Lions: watch the losing SB team lose horribly due to the direct failure of one specific unit, and then go “That’s our guy”. The Lions hired Patricia after watching his defense turn into a pile of mush against the Eagles in 2017. To be fair, this method has worked out: the 49ers hired Shanahan directly after watching him not run the ball in the greatest choke job in football history. Of course, the 49ers don’t have a ring to show for it yet, but Shanny is a good coach. I don’t know if Gannon is actually that bad of a hire. I would have expected an offensive HC considering the Kyler problem, but the Cardinals cleaned house and seemed genuinely interested in hiring young talent. Gannon hired Browns QB coach Drew Petzing as OC, so that’s to be determined. He poached the Eagles LB coach to be DC. Lots of young, unproven talent on this coaching roster, and that might make the Cardinals a very interesting team. It might also be a disaster. Lastly, Johnathan Gannon looks like PeeWee Herman, so from now on, that’s how I’m drawing him. GRADE: C
BRONCOS HC – SEAN PAYTON
The big-name retread of the bunch. As far as retreads go, the Broncos could have done far worse. Payton wasn’t even fired from the Saints, he stepped down because lol at sticking around that mess without Drew Brees. I get it. Now he gets to work his magic with another notable short QB and try to unfuck whatever is wrong with Russell Wilson. That, or the Broncos sign Taysom Hill, and he gets to continue his love affair with the swiss army knife. Payton is a genuinely good offensive mind and even if Russ is well and truly cooked he should probably do better under Payton than Hackett. At the minimum, Payton has enough strong will to kick Russ in the ass. They also hired Vance Joseph back to be DC, which I think is a good move, and in a hilarious bit of trivia, hired former Giants QB Davis Webb as QB coach. You know, the 28th-year-old who didn’t throw a pass until week 18’s give-up game against the Eagles. Russ is not going to listen to a word he says. GRADE: B
COLTS HC – SHANE STEICHEN
From Reich to Steich, an Indianapolis story. Disappointing everyone who is not a Colts fan, Irsay made a decent hire instead of promoting Jeff Saturday. It’s amazing the circle of coaches in the NFL sometimes. The Colts hired Frank Reich from the Eagles. The Eagles took Nick Sirianni from that staff and made him coach. Now Sirianni has his own OC poached for the Colts HC job. Wild amounts of coaching incest, the Eagles and Colts are stepsiblings who keep getting caught in the dryer. Like Gannon, I’m not entirely sure what to expect here. I don’t know how much of the Eagles offensive success comes from Steichen. I didn’t even know his name prior to the playoffs, no broadcast ever seemed to talk about him. Both he and Gannon make me more curious to see what becomes of the Eagles next year rather than seeing what happens to the Cardinals or Colts. GRADE: B
PANTHERS HC – FRANK REICH
The other retread, but I’m happy Reich got a new job because I think he did pretty well with a shit gig in Indianapolis. He got handed a different old, broken, or washed-up QB every year and somehow had to make it work, and kinda did. I think Reich is a good coach and if he gets the right staff around him and they draft a good prospect, things bode well for the Panthers. He poached a McVay staffer (Thomas Brown) to be OC. His biggest get, and maybe the sneaky best move of the offseason, was stealing Ejiro Evero from the Broncos. The Broncos defense last year was the one great thing about them, and now the architect is in Carolina. He even convinced Dom Capers to stop by and offer some help. The Carolina defense should be pretty good! The Panthers remind me of the Giants last year: a good hire who surrounded himself with a lot of other good hires. GRADE: A
TEXANS HC – DEMECO RYANS
Yeah, this is a good fit. While I wonder about the abilities of an SF coach considering the stacked roster in the bay has no produced two head coaches (and the first one hasn’t done anything special in New York), I can’t argue with this hire. He’s a local hero, he coordinated in SF very well, he’s young, and he’s getting the blank slate of New Texans after several years of crapping themselves. Doesn’t mean it’ll work out, but sometimes a fit just feels right. GRADE: A
OTHER NOTABLE COACHING MOVES
JETS OC – NATE HACKETT
Already did a comic on this, but Jets, what the fuck are you doing?
COMMANDERS OC – ERIC BIENIEMY
Over the past few years there’s been no greater example of the problem with minority coaching struggles than Bieniemy. Bieniemy has been the OC of the best offense in the league over the past 5 years, has won 2 rings, has spent years working with arguably the best offensive mind in football, and nobody wanted to hire him. Bieniemy has a few legit red flags (He had a few personal conduct issues in his past and many people still wonder how much of the offense is him vs Reid), but every new hire has red flags. Why does Bieniemy get the kind of scrutiny and second-guessing he does from teams for working under Andy Reid while guys like Gannon, or Steichen, or Kevin O’Connell, or any of the McVay acolytes, or Mike Kafka, Hackett, or all these other guys who get hired almost immediately? What has Gannon done to get a job as HC over Bieniemy? Mike Kafka of the Giants was in the running for the Cardinals HC job before losing out to Gannon. A guy who used to work under Bieniemy, with Patrick Mahomes, under Andy Reid, almost made it farther than Bieniemy did in one season as OC. A Chiefs team with Bieniemy has reached 3 Super Bowls in the past 4 years. The Eagles reached one super bowl, lost it, to those very Chiefs, and both young white coordinators get hired out. If it wasn’t for DeMeco Ryans, this year would have been another young white guy fest. I’m glad the league is finally trending out of old white guys and into younger talent, but it’s still pathetic that Bieniemy has to banish himself on a lateral move to the Commies just to try and prove he’s capable without Andy.
PANTHERS QB COACH – JOSH MCCOWN
I’m sad he’s not the Texans HC, but hey, if the guy is suited for a gig, this is a fine one. If the Panthers QB sucks, we can point and laugh!
GIANTS OC and DC – MIKE KAFKA and WINK MARTINDALE
Both coaches were in the running for gigs and I would have been deeply saddened to see the best coaching staff I’ve seen in a decade get broken up immediately before the real work starts. I do hope Wink can one day get the HC job he desires, and Kafka will probably be another rising star if the offense continues to work next season. But I’m so glad we get to see them for one more year.
COWBOYS OC – BRIAN SCHOTTENHEIMER
This was a mistake lmao, Schotty sucks
CHARGERS OC – KELLEN MOORE
Moore got a lot of praise early on in his Cowboys tenure and I thought he was a solid OC overall. He parted ways (read: I don’t want to work here anymore) with the Boys after the terrible playoff loss and now gets to coach Justin Herbert, with a fraction of the national scrutiny. Good for him.
VIKINGS DC – BRIAN FLORES
Yeah, that’s a damn good hire. Good job, Vikings. They might actually be legitimately good next year instead of a fluke.
I was so worried our front office would fuck this up, and when we failed to get Evero, it really did seem like we were going to end up with an in-house hire in Pettine. Words can’t describe the relief I feel once we scored Flores. While I read that we were going to stick with 3-4 defense, we might actually BLITZ next year!
On another note, way to get Yamcha’d, Gannon.
Fellow Vikings fan: Flores was such a great get. I can’t say enough about how ON PAPER this is exactly what we needed. We need aggression and someone who understands scheme flexibility. How many times was Danielle freaking Hunter dropping into coverage last year??? That should not happen!! How many times did our 6’2 CBs start 5 yards off of the LOS? BFlo gives us a shot to be at least average on defense, which I think could have brought this team to the NFC Championship this year.
I’m low-key glad we didn’t move off of Dona-shell earlier because I’m not certain we would have gotten BFlo. Even if it’s for a year or two, that’s enough to get the right personnel in and coached up.
That was my greatest issue with Donatell. The man just REFUSED to adapt and it felt like he kept trying to jam the square peg into the round hole and force our defense into schemes that weren’t made for them. KOC and Cousins had to bail him out every time, which worked…until it didn’t.
I’m optimistic (cautiously, but still) about our chances next year. We have time to assemble a defensive core that will perform as advertised. Question is, who stays and who leaves. All we know so far is that we re-signed Brandle and Tonga.
As an Eagles fan, good riddance to Gannon. I just hope that the Cardinals don’t ruin Caleb Williams.
Steichen is… alright. I’m hoping Indy sees him as a Sirianni-type leader more than a scheming genius, because his utilization of weapons is pretty good, he had a number of questionable blocking schemes and late down strategies when the “tush push” wasn’t available. Rooting for him, not sure how it will work out.
As for us, I think we *should* be fine. QB coach Brian Johnson is almost certainly gonna be the OC, and he’s done immaculate work with Jalen Hurts and is seen as a rising star. I just hope we can keep him around as long as possible.
On the DC front, it seems to have been a tougher go. The Eagles’ deep run meant that Gannon stayed around longer, so by the time he was hired Vic Fangio was already off to Miami (he actually worked as a consultant for the team all season, not just for the SB). Internal promotion seems like it might be tougher now that Gannon took our LB coach for his DC (meh). I saw the DC from Wisconsin interviewed but decided to take a medical year off, and I also heard Sean Desai rumored which would be GREAT. But it remains to be seen.
And maybe because it snuck in yesterday, but you didn’t even mention Vance Joseph, going as DC to…. the Broncos. Where he was fired from just 2 years ago, in lieu of Hackett. That might legitimately be the weirdest one of them all.
Joseph was also interviewed by the Eagles for DC, but opted to go back to the team that fired him (even if it is a new ownership and front office.) Combined with the fact that the Eagles reportedly offered Gannon *MORE* than he’d get as a HC to stay onboard, I have to believe that they’re basically telling any DC candidates that they have to continue to run Gannon’s system with no more than a few tweaks. That’s generally not a good way toapproach this, and makes me worried about how poorly the defense will run next year. (Especially since the defense is where the vast majority of talent turnover will be, given the ages and/or contract situations involved.)
I mentioned Vance Joseph briefly in the Broncos section
So you did. Sorry about that.
As a Giants fan I’m happy the we get to keep our coaching trip for at least another year. While I’m worried about a sophomore slump after an overperforming first year, I’m happy with where the team’s at.
The Bieniemy stuff is just ridiculous at this point. This is the exact thing so many of us harp on when it comes to the league’s handling of racial coaching equality: The most qualified of black coaches still get pushed aside in favor of some of the least-qualified white coaches.
How does a guy who has won so much not even sniff a position. Even as a 1-year fall guy like Lovie Smith? From what I understand, he’s kind of a hard ass. He’s an old school guy who wasn’t afraid to accost Adrian Peterson during his time in MN. Maybe we’re seeing a move away from that type of coaching? I don’t know. The whole he-doesn’t-really-call-plays things is so overblown too because that shouldn’t matter. He’s been in the building, directly contributing to building the Chiefs dynasty. He has seen what it takes, and actually made plenty of moves within that plan. Who gives a rip if he HAS called plays. CAN he call plays? I’m guessing yes. But the league’s refusal to give him any kind of opportunity just feels weird. I’m not saying it IS racial, but it definitely feels like implicit bias is at play.
I’m a pessimist by nature so I’m of the opinion most of the chiefs offense was just Reid and that Bieniemy barely did anything, plus this franchise isn’t known for making good decisions so I’m just gonna assume it doesn’t work like nearly everything else.
HE DID THE DEAD YAMCHA POSE!!!! Ahhhahahahahahahaha!!
Never been truer hovertext
Adams? I think you mean smith? As an eagles fan I don’t think anyone has the name Adams on the team.
No commentary on the end of the Joe Judge/Matt Patricia error in New England?
I’m always amazed Frank Reich gets off so easily and maintains his reputation as a good coach. Admittedly Irsay is a crazy person, but still logic and local chatter makes it pretty hard to believe that the “retread QB” plan year after year was forced on him by the owner and GM only – the Wentz one especially was cast much more as an “I and I only, Frank Reich, QB whisperer, know how to get through to him”. And we all know how that Wentz.
In fact, somehow they both got through that better in the national media than I would’ve guessed. And it’s not that Wentz never had good moments – he did! It’s just that his bad moments were SO bad (left handed pass out of his own end zone, etc.), and they came so much more often than most people thought because he got away with most of them. I was subjected to a lot of Colts games, and in every one, I’ve never seen the defense drop so many interceptions that hit them in the hands. Often where they were the only ones close to the ball.
But as a fan who cares not about the Colts nor the Panthers, I find it hilarious from a football perspective that Reich is ALWAYS the second choice. His biggest moment in college was coming off the bench as a backup in the Orange Bowl. In the NFL as a player, his star turns were filling in for an injured Jim Kelly, including his part in the (at that time) biggest playoff comeback ever. As an OC, he won a ring with the backup QB. As a head coach in Indy, he only got the job when McDaniels backed out of it. And now in Carolina, they desperately wanted Harbaugh or Sean Payton, but settled for Reich. Maybe he’s secretly a good choice, but it’s funny that he’s never the one the team wanted.
Sean Payton was never a serious option for Carolina. And the Panthers declined Harbaugh. I don’t know where you’re getting your news from.
If anything the Panthers wanted Ben Johnson before he decided to go back to Detroit.
Oh, just little nobodys sitting on their couches in the mom’s basement – ESPN, PFT, University of Michigan, Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen, the Ringer, NFL network podcasts 🙂
I’m intrigued that the local angle was that on Payton and Harbaugh though. The local and national picture are often at odds though, and certainly not only in Carolina. The national angle was definitely that they were serious about Payton, Harbaugh, and Johnson – not that they “settled” for Reich, but I definitely didn’t see anyone suggesting he was their first choice.
My Ravens got Todd Monken! I wasn’t thrilled at first but the more I learn about him he seems to be everything Greg wasn’t and boy we need thst
Pretty much everyone in Denver was sad that we couldn’t keep Eviro. I am extremely skeptical of the defense being as good with Vance Joseph back in town.
Flores should still be the Dolphins coach #DropRoss
Re: the alt text:
I can never quit you, Dave
And then there’s the Saints, who looked like total shit and probably would’ve been lucky to have 4 wins in a division that wasn’t so aggressively incompetent, but did… *flat nothing* as far as coaching changes.
The answer on Bieniemy is simple: he’s not just not a good OC, he’s not an OC at all. Andy Reid runs the Chiefs’ offense. Reid calls the plays, and is responsible for Mahomes’s development.
Bieniemy also took over the OC position in 2018, the same year Mahomes took the starting job.
I think any team is smart enough to recognize that Bieniemy has absolutely nothing at all to do with the Chiefs offensive success. Add that to his personal conduct issues, and it’s pretty clear it has nothing at all to do with race.