The Arizona Cardinals head coach gets high marks from his players.
When the Arizona Cardinals hired Jonathan Gannon in 2023, it was another head coach in a sea of head coaches since the Cardinals moved to the desert.
In fact, Gannon is 12th head coach as the Cardinals head into their 37th season in the valley.
That means by the averages his time is up.
The Cardinals have just seven winning seasons in those 36 years, from four coaches, Vince Tobin, Ken Whisenhunt, who had the most success of any head coach, winning the division two times, winning four playoff games and making the teams lone Super Bowl appearance, Bruce Arians, who is the most successful regular season coach, and of course Kliff Kingsbury.
Ironically each coach was was out within three seasons from their last winning season, meaning that if you falter in AZ, you are done quickly.
Tobin made the playoffs, famously upset the Dallas Cowboys before getting blitzed by the Minnesota Vikings. Tobin would coach only 23 more games as an NFL head coach.
Whiz got 48 more games after the Cardinals went 10-6 in 2009, and he went 18-30 in those games. He is the longest tenured head coach in Cardinals history, making it six full seasons. He was a complete disaster in his final two seasons as a head coach, getting fired from the Tennessee Titans after going 3-20 in one and a half seasons.
Arians famously retired due to medical concerns, before taking over for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, winning a Super Bowl, winning a division and making the playoffs again, before retiring for good. Arians in all his time in AZ, despite going 49-30-1, had one playoff win.
Then there was Kliff. Kliff got one season after his lone playoff berth, finishing with the most regular season wins in franchise history, but of course not winning a playoff game.
The brief history lesson is here to make a point. The Cardinals change coaches on whims, don’t allow things time to be built, and the couple of times they did, specifically Whiz and Arians, it bit them.
Whiz was his own worst enemy, famously making himself the decision maker that made personnel moves, etc.
Arians, well it seems more and more like he just wanted out of this situation. He jumped into the booth, and then back into coaching with a quickness and had the same regular season success he enjoyed in Arizona before getting the post season success he craved for the first time.
For Kliff, it was just the unfortunate Cardinals way (I don’t mean that in a good way) where he was brought down by a lack of foresight and the unwillingness of the owner to move on from his GM that had dragged the franchise down into the mud.
Kliff had his warts as a head coach, but he was a scapegoat for the bigger issues… that still remain.
You see, this is the third publicly released NFLPA report card, the Cardinals finished 31st in the first public one, unfortunately there was no measure for the head coach or owner.
In last years version, the first with the grades for the head coach and owner the Cardinals head coach, Jonathan Gannon was ranked 15th. Honestly, incredible for a first year head coach on a team that was not good. These interviews are done between August and November, so they didn’t even get the Kyler boost time.
This year, Gannon is the eighth ranked head coach. His players love him and love that he cares for them:
- The players feel that Gannon is highly receptive to locker room feedback on the team’s needs, ranking him 7 out of 32 head coaches in the league.
This is building a culture, but culture building only last for so long when everything around you is crumbling.
It is being reported that the Cardinals will make $100 million in upgrades to their much maligned practice facility, the previous upgrades were done in 2015 at $15 million, that is less than many high schools spend on facilities, even locally.
What Gannon is trying to build in Arizona has been desperately needed, and the question now becomes, does he make it long enough to see the fruits of that labor, or will it be the next regime that gets to enjoy it?