Embattled Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon has a beef regarding the ability to teach his defensive players how to properly do battle during games.
Via Josh Weinfuss of ESPN.com, Gannon attributed tackling woes to rules that make it hard to practice tackling.
“How the rules are set up, it’s hard to get better as a tackler being in the NFL, I’ll say that,” Gannon told reporters on Wednesday.
Gannon said the Cardinals have tackling drills in “some way, shape or form because that’s one of the top skills of any defense player,” but he said there’s “no drill you can do that can mimic a game.”
And it all traces, in Gannon’s view, to rules that make it harder to teach and practice tackling.
“It’s set up how it’s set up, that’s fine,” Gannon said. “But to get better at a skill, you have to practice the skill. You practice skill, you can scale it, you can scale the tempo, you can scale how you do it, but to practice a skill, you need to practice the skill.”
The rule changes first emerged with the 2011 CBA negotiations, when the owners closed the deal by agreeing to various terms that ultimately cost the league no money — like reduced padded practices and other changes to the non-game workload.
“And so it’s a conundrum I think all defensive guys face and there’s risk-reward to trying to practice it with it however you set things up,” Gannon said. “But you definitely have to be a good tackling defense to play good defense.”
The reality is that the rules are the same for all teams, and that the rules have been restrictive for 15 seasons now. Also, plenty of teams have managed to teach their players how to tackle in games — or to find players who don’t need any specific drills to know how to do it at the professional level.
From tackling to blocking to everything else that goes into winning football games, the Cardinals collectively don’t have enough. After starting 2-0, they’ve gone 1-11. Which puts Gannon in position to get sacked when the season ends in 18 days.
