The impact of what this message means to Kyler and the other players on the team
For two years, I have been trying to get comfortable and confident in head coach Jonathan Gannon.
When the Cardinals rolled off their four-game winning streak —- with the defense suddenly dialing up successful blitz packages and becoming stingy in pass coverage —- and with Kyler Murray playing his best football since the first 7 games in 2021 —- my confidence in Jonathan Gannon and the direction of the team was at an all-time high.
Then came the bye week.
Ugh.
To watch Jonathan Gannon get summarily outcoached by first year defensive-minded head coach Mike Macdonald twice in three weeks while a panic-stricken Kyler Murray was gift-wrapping interceptions to Seattle’s ball hawks —- was dispiriting.
To watch the Cardinals play so well for three quarters in Minnesota only to see Jonathan Gannon opt to kick a field goal on a 4th and 3 in the redzone while clinging to a 3-point lead only to discover his late game defensive plan was to play a version of soft-zone prevent defense to the point where NFL All-Pro Justin Jefferson was essentially left uncovered, even on a 4th and 7 with the game on the line —- was demoralizing.
After the bye week, when, after three straight losses, the Cardinals dropped to 6-7, and had plummeted out of first place in the NFC West, for the first time in two years, Jonathan Gannon and his assistant coaches publicly questioned their players’ effort on a Monday where Jonathan Gannon inexplicably gave the players the day off.
But —- even then —-the Cardinals still had the fate of the division in their own hands if they could win their remaining 4 games and if the Seahawks were to go 2-2 in one of the toughest parts of their schedule (which they did).
Alas, all hopes were dashed when the Cardinals lost to a 3-win Panthers team in Carolina 36-30 (OT).
What was different after the bye week?
The most telling difference was the Cardinals’ QB sudden penchant for turning the ball over.
Some fans` were blaming Kyler’s interceptions, you guess it, on the offensive line and the OC.
Um, not so fast.
As ROTB’s RedC so aptly highlighted on the “Petzing is a budding star” thread:
The Arizona Cardinals’ strong performances in the last month have seen them climb inside the top 10 in our NFL OL rankings. They sit first over the past four weeks, with back-to-back games that have graded as an A- or better and a game that graded as a B in Week 17. It is crazy to think that despite the play of this line, the Cardinals are 1-3 in that stretch.
This season, Kyler Murray not only played behind the best offensive line he’s had in his NFL career, but he was also surrounded by major talent at the skill positions, most notably with the talented trio of TE Trey McBride, RB James Conner and WR Marvin Harrison Jr.
The Cardinals’ running game finished top 10 in the NFL in virtually all the most important categories —- and finished #1 in the NFC West in all those rushing categories. If someone had told you two years ago that in 2024, the Cardinals’ rushing game would be the very best in the NFC especially considering how prolific Sean McVay’s and Kyle Shanahan’s rushing games have been over the years, would you have believed it?
Heck, even at the end of Kyler Murray’s 8-game stint last season the Cardinals were boasting a top 10 offense. This has not been an offense bereft of talent. Quite the contrary.
And this isn’t the first time that Kyler Murray has been surrounded by impressive talent. Check out the lineups in 2020 and 2021 (both seasons were also top 10 offenses).
Yet, every game this season we had to listen to the broadcast crews quote Kyler as saying how comfortable he finally is to be in an offense where “I don’t have to be Superman and run around and make plays all the time for us to win.”
The mere insinuation of poor Kyler being stuck with Cardinals’ offenses that could only win when he was donning a Superman cape is not only patently false, given the talent he’s been surrounded by year after year, the insinuation is egregiously disrespectful to his teammates.
So, the day after the season ended, this is what Jonathan Gannon told the media about his exit interview with Kyler Murray: (from Theo Mackie’s January 7 article in the Arizona Republic)
Jonathan Gannon takes blame for Cardinals missing playoffs (azcentral.com)
He (Gannon) is certain of one thing: Kyler Murray is not to blame for the Cardinals’ shortcomings. “He’s a top-level franchise quarterback,” Gannon said. “He’s played like that, he’s shown that.”
When the two met on Monday morning, Murray was still replaying some of the season’s most frustrating moments in his mind. Gannon challenged him to look forward. He asked his quarterback what the common denominator is among the list of quarterbacks who reached the playoffs.
The way Jonathan Gannon described the conversation was that he had five whole notecards of items he wanted to discuss with Kyler, when typically he has half a note card for other players, and that he asked Kyler to reflect on what NFL playoff team QBs have in common and why those star QBs are so successful.
So, he let Kyler start to answer the question and just as Kyler was making his points, Gannon said, “I’m going to stop you right there —- I’ll make it easy on you. It’s good teams. That’s what it is. Good quarterbacks are on good teams.”
Reactions:
- What is said between an NFL head coach and his starting QB during an exit interview should not be made public, particularly if it is demeaning to the players.
- In this particular case, what Jonathan Gannon just told the media is that Kyler fell short of the playoffs this year because he was not on a good team. Therefore, I ask you, what kind of a message is that for the entire football team, many of whom have been trying to embrace the notion that they have something special going for them in Arizona? Think too of what this would mean to Kyler’s teammates to essentially understand that the head coach basically feels that the team let Kyler down and not vice versa.
- Maybe this is an insight into the reasons why Gannon had the lack of confidence in his offense to go for the win on 4th and 3 in the redzone against the Vikings —- and/or in trying to protect a 6-point lead with the game on the line why he didn’t have the confidence to stick with the blitzes and man coverages that helped the Cardinals jump out to a good lead in the first place —- at the expense of leaving Justin Jefferson wide open in Gannon’s soft cardboard-figure zones.
- Ever since Monti Ossenfort and Jonathan Gannon arrived, they not only took the risk of hitching their wagons to a player who refused to finish the team’s one playoff game —- a game in which JJ Watt rehabbed his ever-living tail off to play in —- a game where Budda Baker, despite the team getting embarrassed, threw his body full-force at RB Cam Akers and got knocked out —- and while unconscious, as Budda laid on the field motionless, Akers stood over him and taunted him —- and while Budda was being wheeled off the field on a gurney into an ambulance as players from both teams were kneeling in prayer, Kyler Murray was half a football field away sitting on the bench with Colt McCoy and an assistant coach —- and a few weeks later the “24-year old kid” scrubbed his socials of all photos and references that were Cardinals’ related —- y’all know the story from there —- I mean any GM or HC should understand what a player quitting on a football team does to a locker room —- go and ask John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan —- yet Monti Ossenfort and Jonathan Gannon were willing and eager to lionize Kyler Murray from day one, even going as far as Gannon proclaiming he wouldn’t have taken the job without Kyler Murray being “the franchise QB”
- And ever since, pretty much everything that MOJO has prioritized personnel-wise has leaned heavily toward “making Kyler comfortable.”
- And guess what? Despite dedicating two top ten picks in their drafts to taking the offensive players Kyler requested and drafting 2 tackles (R1, R5), 2 guards (R3, R4), 3 WRs (R1, R3, 6), 1 TE (R3), 1 RB (R3) in addition to signing or re-signing Gs Will Hernandez, Evan Brown, Trystan Colon, Ts Kelvin Beachum, Jonah Williams, WRs Greg Dortch, Zay Jones, while putting stock into developing the likes of TEs Trey McBride and Elijah Higgins and RB Emari Demercado —- at the expense of passing on star-quality defensive players at positions of urgent need for the Cardinals —- yet despite all of this —- Kyler clearly is still not comfortable playing in games that are meaningful or post-October —- particularly in NFC West games where his post-October record in the division is 2-16, while a much more comfortable looking Colt McCoy post-October posted a record NFC West record of 3-1, beating all three rivals SF, SEA and LAR by double digit points on the road.
- So now, Gannon’s message not only exonerates Kyler from his squeamish play when the team most needs him to play his best —- it basically corroborates Kyler’s own haughty statements such as “I am not used to losing. I have won everywhere I’ve played” and “I had to play like Superman to give us a chance to win.”
- How a team’s QB conducts himself and how consistently well he leads the team is what creates “good” teams. The truth that Jonathan Gannon is blindly ignoring is —- the best QBs in the NFL typically get drafted by bad teams and yet the best QBs were able to help their teams rise out from the doldrums and into the limelight. Just in Gannon’s two-year tenure as HC in Arizona, look at the difference that C.J. Stroud has made with the once bottom-of-the-barrel Texans —- look at what Jayden Daniels has meant to the Commanders who were picked to come in last in the NFC East —- look at what Bo Nix has done to help the Broncos return to the playoffs for the first time since Paintin’ Manning left the Rockies after the 2015 season. One could only wonder what Vance Jospeh would have to say about Bo Nix.
- Telling Kyler Murray and the media that he’s played like a top-level franchise QB is misleading. Early in seasons, Kyler looks the part. But top level franchise QBs don’t go into the tank in November, December and January. Just the opposite. As ROTB member SunDevil99 pointed out in the Petzing thread —- here are the numbers:
- 1ST HALF OF SEASONS: 22 wins, 17 losses, 1 tie, 61 TDs and 27 INTs (2.25 to 1 TD/INT ratio)
- 2ND HALF OF SEASONS: 14 wins, 28 losses, 50 TDs and 30 INTs (1.66 to 1 TD/INT ratio)
- 36-45-1 career record
- 7-20 career record in the NFC West
- 5-4 1ST HALF OF SEASONS in the NFC West
- 2-16 2ND HALF OF SEASONS in the NFC West
- In the three seasons where the Cardinals were either in 1st place in the NFC West after 10 games or with one win down the stretch could qualify as a Wild Card:
- 2020: 0-2 losses to SF at home and LAR on the road (missed playoffs by 1 win)
- 2021: 0-2 losses to LAR at home and SEA at home (missed winning NFC West by 1 win)
- 2024: 0-2 losses to SEA (2) on the road and at home (missed winning the division or qualifying as a Wild Card).
These key games were all a moot point, right? Because, after all…
“Good quarterbacks are on good teams.”
Finally, our great friend Marcos Labrada on the Redbird Reboot Podcast yesterday said it best —-
“This message says to Kyler —- it isn’t him —- he doesn’t need to improve —- it’s not his fault —- it’s not his job to improve —-it’s the people around him —- they’re the ones always screwing up —- the players around him are the ones to blame —- they are the ones who need to improve.”
.