The Eagles will welcome former Philly defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, now the Cardinals head coach, to town on Sunday. There’s still an undercurrent of tension regarding the way his departure was handled, even if both sides insist there’s nothing to see here.
The Cardinals tampered with Gannon, contacting him directly to invite him to interview for the head-coaching job at a time when contact was prohibited. The Eagles were not happy about it.
“Obviously all those questions have been asked and answered,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said Tuesday when asked about the manner in which Gannon’s departure impacted the relationship between the two men.
While some questions have been asked, most have not been answered. At least not satisfactorily. The tampering allegation was concealed until literally five minutes before the draft started. While it couldn’t be completely swept under the rug because the resolution involved an exchange of draft picks, it was announced in a way that minimized scrutiny.
A new item on ESPN.com takes a closer look at the situation, adding some new details about the problems caused by Arizona’s tampering with Gannon — and by Gannon’s concealment of it from the Eagles.
Gannon had said after the Eagles beat the Giants in the divisional round, “Philly’s keeping me. Good, bad or indifferent, I’m staying here.”
That declaration caused the Eagles to miss out on hiring Vic Fangio to succeed Gannon, per the report. The Eagles first learned on the Friday before the Super Bowl that Cardinals G.M. Monti Ossenfort would be submitting an interview request for Gannon after the Super Bowl. If the Eagles knew Gannon was planning to interview for the job, they could have tried to keep Fangio, who verbally accepted the defensive coordinator position in Miami.
The Eagles, according to ESPN.com, tried to get Fangio to stay in Philadelphia once they became aware of Gannon’s potential exit. Per the report, “word was already traveling through NFL circles that Gannon and the Cardinals had made more in-roads than anyone had let on.”
Gannon denied in comments to ESPN.com that progress had been made toward him getting the Arizona job, calling it “100% false.” Gannon also downplayed the extent of the impermissible conversations with the Cardinals.
"[Ossenfort] didn’t say, ‘This is a done deal,’” Gannon told ESPN.com. “I really, honestly, kind of put it out [of] the back of my mind.”
That seems like a stretch, to say the least. Gannon interviewed for the Cardinals job the day after the Super Bowl. Did he show up for the biggest meeting of his coaching career unprepared, winging it the Cardinals? Or did he spend time while he should have been preparing for the Super Bowl getting together his presentation, lining up his potential staff, and doing the other things that coaching candidates do when preparing to interview for one of the 32 most coveted jobs in all of football?
Common sense suggests that Gannon did more than put it out of the back of his mind. Common sense suggests that any time he spent preparing for the Arizona interview could have been devoted to addressing flaws in the Philly defense (like, for example, when adjusting to a receiver who goes in motion and abruptly turns around before catching a walk-in touchdown, twice).
It’s why some believe the hiring process shouldn’t even start until after the Super Bowl has ended. Every assistant coach wants to be a head coach. When the possibility lands on an assistant coach’s radar screen, of course it becomes a distraction.
In this case, the possibility of becoming a head coach secretly and improperly landed on Gannon’s radar screen. He concealed the information from the Eagles. And either he didn’t begin preparing for his interview until the wee hours of the night before it happened — or he did indeed spend time getting ready for the interview when that time could have been spent doing more to get the Eagles defense prepared for the Super Bowl.
Although Eagles G.M. Howie Roseman answered my questions on the issue by dubbing me a conspiracy theorist, it’s no conspiracy to acknowledge that Arizona’s tampering diluted Gannon’s time, divided his priorities, and ultimately undermined the performance of the Eagles defense in the Super Bowl.
Which possibly explains why the league worked so hard to downplay the situation. If all questions were asked and all questions were answered, we’d know how Gannon divided his time and attention between doing his current job to the best of his ability and landing the job he’d been working for his entire life. We’d know how many hours were spent talking to potential staff members and putting together notes for his meeting with the Cardinals and perhaps even rehearsing his presentation.
If the whole truth came out, the final conclusion could be that Arizona’s tampering kept the Eagles from putting their best foot forward during the Super Bowl. That’s something the league definitely doesn’t want anyone to realize — especially not any of the many who cumulatively bet millions on the Eagles to win.