The Dave Pasch Podcast - Jonathan Gannon

Hey everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Dave Pash Podcast. I'm your host ESPN and Arizona Cardinals play by play announcer Dave Pash. Our guest this week is first year Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannett. Some great summer listening for Cardinal fans to get you ready but the twenty twenty three season. We'll talk with Jag about some of his coaching philosophies, some of the people that have mentored him over the years, what to expect from

I think they need to be impact players for us, and that's how we retreating them. Both of those guys are extremely intelligent. So everyone sees a physical skill set, but they don't know what they have in their brain. And that's what excites me the most about those two guys is their brain.

We'll also talk about the Cardinals first round draft pick Paris Johnson, what to expect from some of the young players this season, and we'll also get into his assistant coaches and the two coordinators hired in the off season, and what Cardinal Fann should look for in twenty twenty three. We are presented by BETMGM, the official sports betting partner of the Arizona Cardinals, and by Heila River Resorts and Casinos. Sign up today with BETMGM, the official partner of the

It's definitely not John. Yeah.

I mean some guys call me coach Gannon, but I go by JG. It's easy and quick, and to me, I'm one of the guys. So JG's a pretty good title for me, I think.

And was that something that everybody called you when you were playing and stuff?

It was Louisville, It was yeah, because I didn't honestly, I don't like John, so Jonathan johnan three syllables kind of longer, so it just turned into JG.

Get over here.

So, well, you got some energy man. I met you briefly with Michael. I don't know it was two or three months ago, but I could tell when you came into the studio. I could hear you down the way a little bit yelling out to Tim Delaney, our boss. So you got some energy, man, which has been contagious and infectious. I've heard a lot of guys talk about that. Have you had a chance to kind of get settled into the valley?

Yeah?

Yeah, my crews out here just got out here last week. I Memorial Day weekend and waiting for the house to get kind of done. But really enjoyed the city the times. I haven't been out a lot, but I like to go explore restaurants and I think that the city has some good things to offer. And excited to be here really, so it's good to get the crew here they start school in Augus or whatever. They older too, but really, honestly,

Oh, I lived there for two years. Where are you guys going? You know what I mean? Make sure you go to this spot or whatever it is. So I like that. We've lived in some different places.

Do you have a spot picked out yet? Like a regular spot you guys go to?

Not so much yet.

I've been to some good places though, up kind of around the fashion mall right there. I like Francine, like Nobu, like Stake forty four.

You're all the expensive places.

I'm going to Ocean forty four in a week or two. So the Henry, I like the Henry a lot. Henry's cool for breakfast. I haven't been there for dinner, but I like the Henry. I went after church one Sunday morning it was packed. I was like, Wow, this is pretty cool.

Are people starting to recognize you or can you pretty much go in and nobody says anything to you.

It depends where you go, but you do get the recognization of oh, hey, you're the new coach.

You know what I mean? Good luck? Go cards.

You know.

It's cool.

I kind of like to stay under the radar anyhow, but hopefully we start winning, get this thing rolling.

You can't go anywhere.

So obviously I want to talk a lot about you as a coach and philosophy and some of the things you've done in your career, But I want to go back to growing up. You grew up in Cleveland, right, football, basketball, track? Three sport guy?

Correct?

Who are your teams growing up? Browns, Calves?

You know whoever? I was a front runner? Whoever was winning?

Honestly, really, I was a huge Charles Woodson fan right kind of the end of grade school, high school, so he was a Michigan guy. So I was kind of always pulling for Michigan, even though I was on house to you know, Ohio guy. But you know, honestly, who was ever winning?

You know?

I concentrated more on the players than the teams, I think.

And you played football at Louisville, I know, until you had a career ending injury. But did you look at going elsewhere? Did you think about could you play basketball or done track?

I could have Yeah, yeah, I could have played. So my sophomore year, the head basketball coach of my high school and the head football coach hit me down and they say, you know, JG. You can go to a Division I school and play basketball. You can go to a Division I school and play football. You're not going to go to the NBA. You have a chance to go to the NFL. So their pitch to me was stop playing AU basketball and start running track. So that's

So.

I kind of I knew probably football was my you know, highest ceiling, I think, And that's what I did. So I had a couple different to play, pretty good offers to play Division one football. I picked Louisville because they were the one offer that was going to allow me to play dB. Because I played both ways in high school, A lot of teams wanted me to play receiver and I kind of wanted to play dB. So that's one of the reasons I picked Louisville and.

Bobby Patrino was the head coach, right John L.

Smith, John L. Smith.

So I played for John L. Smith, got red shirted, played my reshirt freshman year. That's when I got hurt my tenth game there. But we were good that year for John Allen. He took a Michigan State head coaching job. Bobby Patrino comes. He was the offensive corner at the time at Auburn, so he comes and then so but I never really played for Bobby. I sat out that next year and then I tried to go through the following spring ball and I couldn't, you know, couldn't function.

I remember my first college football game for ESPN. I was actually on Harry Douglas's radio show last week and we were talking a little bit about covering him, but then also we were talking about the NBA playoffs, but talking about covering him, and then mentioned to him. I remember two thousand and four, it was a Sunday night game against Kentucky. It was the first game of the season. I don't remember that you were there then I was there.

Yeah, as a gay.

Coach, Petrino I always felt and I know if there's you know, other things that have happened off the field that you know, he's already spoken of and had answer for it. But in terms of, like as a football mind, he's incredibly respected. What was like your biggest takeaway from being around him and from a football perspective in terms of how maybe he shaped you as a coach?

Yeah, really good question, Dave.

He I mean, the details of a play and it was like it was the first you know, because you're as a player you really don't you know, but you don't know. And I remember sitting in a staff meeting and him talking about outside zone out of twelve personnelic trips, wing and I'm like, wow, that is like I don't I don't have a clue what football is, and just the different ways to attack defenses and leverages and number counts and IDs in the run game. It was like,

You know what I mean, Harry Douglas.

You know he should have been playing corner, but he goes and has a career being a receiver in the NFL. But it was really that kind of shaped my mind of just how detailed you have to be if you want to be a good coach. And I'm still working on that part of my game to this day, you know what I mean.

But that was like it was like.

A master class of footwork and leverage and hand placement, and it was like, Wow, there's a lot of stuff going on each play. You know that that fans really don't know. You know, how would they know?

Sure?

But you know, I think there was an appreciation from me that there's a lot that goes into this job.

It's funny that you say that. So and I brought this guy up a couple of times on this podcast. Urban Meyer, who I worked with in between Florida and Ohio State. He was my booth partner, him and Chris Pielman. We had a three man booth together, and I remember I used to watch film all the time, like in preparation for games. And he said to me one time, He's like, well, what are you looking at when you're

Yeah, I mean, you know, right from the jump. When we went to Atlanta, the defensive coordinator was Mike Zimmer for Bobby and the dB coach was Emma Thomas and so long time NFL guys, both had coordinated, both.

Were dB coaches.

I would say those two from the start just about dB play and philosophy of how to play defense with coach Zimmer, and then I, you know, then I went and scouted for a couple of years after that, and then I got back into coaching. I was quitely controlling Tennessee and Jerry Gray was a coordinator. It was kind of a different philosophy than Zim. And there's a lot of ways to play defense you know, out there that

It's like, hey, this is how we've.

Always done it, but what if we could do it like this, Like what if we just added this, or what if we took out this? And when I got back with Zim, which so two thousand and seven twenty fourteen, so seven years in between there, and it was like there's a couple things that were the same, but then

And then you'd show you the tape.

So it was it was always kind of cool to me, Like that kind of hit me, and you know, like I said, then I you know, went to Indy and Matt Eberflus was the coordinator under Frank Reich, and he came up a different style of defense. He was a longtime coordinator in college and then was in Dallas for a couple of years and he was under some different coordinators and we played a significantly different style of defense

I had to kind of learn on the run.

And I would ask flu things, you know, hey, like how do you want this being played? How do you see this being played? And he gave me a lot of autonomy, like here's what I need out of the call.

You get it done.

And I had to study Like it wasn't like, oh, here's your manual, go go teach this. You know what I mean, anyone can really do that. It was like, all right, how do I make this make sense?

You know?

How do I make it clear for the players? What can we execute? We got to change your leverage here, you got to do this, You got to do that. And that was really cool for me and I really felt like that style of defense for three years. Then when I became a coordinator in Philly, I kind of meshed what I liked off of both of them. And there's some similarities between the two, but there's some significant differences too. And I was like, man, well, if we can do this, then why can't we do that?

You know?

And then also with saying that I was always in a four down system, Flu and Zim were four down guys.

Jerry was a four down guy.

And you start to see like, here's the good things about playing four down all the time, but here are some downfalls of playing four down all the time. You start to talk to offensive guys, Hey, how do you attack Zim? How do you attack Flu? How do you attack Jerry? You know, how do you attack four down teams? And mixed downs, pass downs, this and that, And you start to talk to offensive guys. And that led me to think, Okay, I need to start studying some three

Of three four defense.

So when I got to Philly, you know, they asked, hey, what scheme you're going to rune?

You know?

And I said, I really don't have one, And that was true. I know, yeah, we have a scheme, we have a way to play defense. But my point to that was is you're got to be able at certain offenses that you go against. You if you only have four down you know, there's some hard downs that are going to go on. If you only play three down, there are some hard downs that are going to go on. So I always thought, like, hey, it's all about the players. It doesn't matter the scheme or anything like that. It's

So what you're saying is you don't have a dogmatic approach, like I'm going to do it this way, and there are obviously guys that are like that, and it's hard to survive anymore in the NFL.

Do it? You can? You know what I mean? You can? But I you know, I use the phrase adapt or die. Man.

You know, the game's changing, The players are changing, you know, Like I mean even you got a a seven or eight year vet and a rookie coming in. Like they're different people, you know what I mean? They play football differently. That eight to ten year gap of age difference for players that are on our team. They grew up playing differently, They went to high school and played differently, they played

You know what I mean?

You try to figure it out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I am not here's my playbook and here's what we're running. I don't think that's the way to go.

So what should Cardinal fans expect in terms of how this defense looks? Will this defense look a lot like your Philly defenses in terms of scheme, in terms of alignment, or will they look like maybe something you did earlier in your career.

You were figuring that out right now, that's a good that's a good question, Dave. Obviously we'll have elements of what we did in Philly. But again, my first thing about schematics is it's all about the players that you have and who you're going again, so we're going to try to I don't really care what we look like as long as we're executing at a high level and doing enough on each all three phases to win the game.

And that's the most important thing.

It's not hey, that's I want to look like this, I want to play like this. Like we play significantly different from week to week. That's predicated on who we have and who they have. So I think that's that's the main point. Is I want us to be adaptable, you know, and you heard that in my press conference, Like I that the heart coaches and players and schematics, you want to be adaptable. Yeah, you have to have a philosophy of what you want to get done, how

You guys obviously had a tremendous defense a son Reddick had some good years before last year, but obviously took it to a new level. Brandon Graham, I think when he came out of Michigan, I feel like his first two years he didn't play much and he wasn't productive, and he got really good as the years went on.

Yeah, I think they need to be in players for us, and that's how we're treating them. You know, both of those guys are extremely intelligent. So everyone sees the physical skill set, but they don't know what they have in their brain and that's what excites me the most about

It's not about one or two guys.

And obviously you've got a lot of time to figure

You know, I wouldn't single anybody out, honestly, Dave, like, we're kind of still figuring that out. I do like the rookie class where they're at from a standpoint of learning what we're trying to get done, how they handle their business on a daily basis, the weight room, the meeting rooms, the training room, on the practice field, working on their body compositions, you know, all those things. I think that I'm very pleased with those guys of how

One guy, do want to get your thoughts on it?

Again?

I realize it's June second that we're recording this and there's still a lot to be you know, a lot of time before even camp starts. But my Jay Sanders, somebody that we saw flash here towards the end of last year when he got more reps. What do you think so far?

Yeah, he's got a unique skill set, you know what I mean. I mean he can bend, he's explosive, He's got really good feel and coverage, you know, when we drop him into coverage, and I think he can be one of our better rushers when it's all said and done.

So he's just like everybody.

He's got a lot to work on part of his game too, but he's taken the coaching. He doesn't make the same mistake twice, which I like because then you can kind of keep moving on, you don't have to keep correcting certain things.

But I got high hopes for him.

I want to ask you about the coaching staff, in particular the coordinators, obviously with with Drew Petsing and Nick Rawlis. You're you're hiring two really young guys. What's your relationship with those guys? When did it start with each guy and what got you to the point where you thought, hey, they can run an offense, they can run a defense.

Yeah, Drew I met in twenty fourteen. He was on zim staff and he was came with Norf Turner, so his first style of playing offense was kind of NORV. And then you know, NORV left and Pat Shermer took over, and then Kevin Stefanski, I think the Philippo was in there. Then Stefanski took over, and then Stefanski went to Cleveland and brought him with him, and Drew, you know, went. He didn't skip any steps. He was a quality control first, and he's a receivers coach, and he's a tight ends coach,

Unbelievable, But.

Myself included, no, not at all. If you want to you ask me anything, I'll tell you. But but yeah, I just I liked his I always thought like he was curious about the game, and hey, this is how Norv did it.

But then I like, this is what Shermer did.

And then Kevin kind of changed this, and then he was with Kubiak for a little bit, and I just loved that he coached different positions on the offense and really I think at the end of the day, had the right answers with how we want to play as a team and as an offense. And so that's why

Know what I mean? Come on, He's not better than me.

He's not better than you, right, He's like, dude, I think he's better than both of us and not even close. And so I was like, well, let me meet this guy, you know what I mean? And I remember I met with him at the Combine when he was a quality control. So this is probably after my first year in India,

He was he was.

Light out, so that's what I did. So and he was with Zim too, so he knew some of the things that I like to do. And then he was very curious about what we did in Indie, different style of defense, how you guys do that, this and that. And so then when I went to Philly, I hired him as a linebacker coach. He was there for two years, and you know, just talking through him through the interview process.

To use your word, Dave.

Is they ask for input, you know what I mean. They use everybody's brain in those rooms, and I think that's extremely important to make sure it's not whose idea, like this's just get the right idea and the right way to do it for us.

You know. And I think it's it's been pretty cool to watch both of those guys.

I got about a few more questions.

We'll let you go.

I'm curious because most first year head coaches, when you ask what the biggest challenge is, they'll say it's after they get through a year, They're like, man, it's all the other stuff. It's the media obligations, it's managing things you never even thought about as an assistant or a coordinator. What have you found to be most challenging so far? Realizing again that we're in early June here and we're not even near the season.

Yeah, I think I've had really good mentors. I feel like they prepped me for a good job because, like, you know, someone called me or someone text me and he said.

Hey, how you holding up?

And you don't know that the tone in a text, right, but the tone of how you holding up is, oh, I'm sure you're struggling right now with it whatever is going on of a first year head coach. And I said, I literally text better, this is the best job I ever had. Like it's awesome, you know what I mean. I I don't mind. I think what I would what I would say is is a lot of balls in the air.

You know, I was a little late to this.

I apologize, but it's like, all right, I'm in with the defense, I'm in with the offensive, in with special teams, I'm doing the schedule. I'm talking about hotels with this guy, I'm talking about logistics for camp for this Like but I.

Don't I don't really mind that. I kind of like that, you know what I mean.

You just got to be you got to be focused in detailed, and you got to take all the information in and you got to make decisions. And then when you make a decision, we just changed something for next week. It says, you know what this, I'm not We're not getting out of what I wanted to get out of this.

We're not getting out of it. So that's that's put our heads together and change this.

And I think as long as you can be focused on the task at hand, with what you're doing, but then also be able to juggle the different balls in the air, then you should be okay. But there's a lot of things that come across my desk every day that it's like, wow, like all right, well, let's let's talk about that, you know what I mean. That's that's we gotta we gotta make a decision on this, you know what I mean. So I would say that just really your time management, and that's that's not too much

We had many on last month. He detailed draft night and the tense moments, and I'm curious your take on it because I assume you've been in draft rooms before, but not as the head coach, So what was that like for you?

It was an awesome experience, I said, there's no doubt I was more nervous than he was, and it was it was really cool to kind of watch that process and how it all came about, and just you know, leading up for two or three months since we've been here, talking about the draft and all the things that could happen and what we're trying to get out of it and this and that, and then you start doing the mock drafts and where we're going to pick, and who's going to be there, and who do we want, who

Now we had prep for it.

He had prep for it, but it was a little bit different with who got picked in front of us and this and that, and it was just really cool. He was I always talked to the coaches about, especially on game day, emotional stability, Like you gotta be, you know, pretty flatlined.

Football is an.

Emotional game, and yes, your emotions run hot, but like if that turns, if your emotions turned into a negative, then you got to be able to subdue him somehow. And I thought that everything that was going on on phone calls. I mean three four guys are on the phone. He's on two different phones. You know, the clock's running down. I'm like, god, this this feels worse to me than a two minute drive, like when they're getting ready to score,

Man, there's a minute fifty the clock, you know what I mean.

But it was really cool, and he obviously did a great job and being the first time he's ever really done that in that seat, I think he hit it out of the park.

You end up with Paris Johnson. What are your thoughts so far?

Yeah, I mean it's a stud. He's everything that you want in your you know, your first pick of your regime. I think, you know, he's a team first guy. You know, he's a versatile player, he's smart, he's got obviously a big time skill set, and he's he's been really a joy to be around, so I you know, he's got he's going to be a really good player.

I keep hearing that Kyler Murray has been here early, he's been here often. He's all in. What have you been your takeaways in your conversations because obviously we you know, we can't we can't know for sure how Kyler is going to be until he comes back healthy. But just based on conversations and work ethic and things you've seen from him, what do you like?

Yeah, I mean, you know, as a you know, as a head coach, you got to have a And I'm not an offensive guy. I'm not going to call the offensive plays. But you want a big time relationship with the quarterback because quarterbacks the most person that's a coach on the field, I think, And just to talk football with him and you know, philosophy of this or what's hard or what's good or hey, when we played you, this is what I was trying to do. This is

Without putting words in your mouth, I have to assume when you were game planning for him, there are things he does that other people can't do, so that means longer hours for you and trying to figure out, Okay, we've got to be really concerned about A, B and C as opposed to maybe just A and B for other quarterbacks.

Yeah, there's no doubt, and you better have those answers before Monday before you play him, you know what I mean, Because it's too hard to try to get that done in five six days. So that's why you got a research in the off season and study guys that you know have similar skill sets to him. But yeah, he presents big time challenges for a defense because of you know, his mobility, you know, and obviously he's the arm talent he has. He can make every throw and make the

For last one. Even Bill Belichick takes the cape off meeting. He's got a life outside of football when he's not grinding like he does. We see Bill Belichick, you know, having extracurricular activities. What are yours when you're not grinding away? And maybe you know, maybe when before your family was here, it was all football. I don't know if that's changed now because the kids around, But what are some of the things you do to unwind take your mind off of football?

You hit it, I mean the family, You know what I mean. I like to spend time with the family. Date Night's always extremely cool for me. I'm grateful for my wife. But you know, I think I do do a pretty good job of when I go home, I kind of leave it at home now that that part's changed. Being a head coach, I will say, going back to your question about being a head coach, like I used to laugh, like when I was out of the building,

Are we doing in that one blitz? You know what I mean?

You know, is that the right thing? Or you know, when you're working out, that's a good time, you know. I feel like that's a good mental release or to get your brain going a little bit. And it's like, you know, you schedule forty five minutes for a workout and it's like it gets thirty in and you're like, man, I need to go, like watch the tape right now because I just had an idea or something like that.

You know what I mean.

I've tried to get enough rest I work out, you know what I mean. I think that's part of physical I just we had coach Peterson in here from you know, Boise in Washington. He came and watch practice today and it was really cool to hear, you know, obviously a long time successful head coach. And he was like, if I said, what you got for me, coach, like give it, give me the answers, you know, and he had some

And that kind of hit me. I was like, well, what do you mean.

He's like, you better work out, you better sleep, you better because that impacts your emotions, how you handle people. That impacts your energy levels when you're with the players, like and they see that, they see you walk into a meeting dragon, But well, what do you think they're gonna do?

You know what I mean?

So I do believe in in trying to stay fully functioning, mental and physically healthy to do your job the best you can do it. So but play a little golf shop a little bit, go out to dinner and play with the kids.

Lift weights. That's about it.

So along those lines in closing, will you have a routine, set up a schedule for in season of Okay, I need to make sure I'm getting X amount of sleep, I need to make sure I'm up at this time, working out, making sure I'm setting aside, I'm compartmentalizing, setting a side time just for the kids, just for my wife, still doing date night. Do you have that all planned out?

Yeah?

But I think you got to go through because I had that planned out as I was a coordinator for in twenty twenty one, and it changed after week three. I was like, no, I got to restructure how I'm doing things. You know what I mean, I'm not getting you know, whatever it was. So I think that'll be a little bit of a learning process for myself. And even when you develop your process and what you're convicted on what works for you, I think that always kind

Well again, I think the thing that stands out coach, just spend a time with you is your energy, your passion, your love for your job. I think people appreciate that when coaches love their job, but that they are relatable and friendly, which you are both. It stands out. So I really enjoyed this and look forward to to know you the course.

Of your coach. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it, appreciate it, all right.

So a snapshot there of Cardinal's new head coach, Jonathan Gannon something to wet your appetite, as Carton fans before we get into training camp and then of course the twenty twenty three season. A lot of great stuff there from JG about his coaching philosophy, some of his mentors over the years. I loved this story about Draft Knight being in that position for the first time as a head coach, and also the respect he has for maniasin for and watching MANI make that trade on Draft Night