On Thursday night, the Arizona Cardinals’ new uniforms were supposed to be the big story of the day. But unfortunately, head coach Jonathan Gannon stole the spotlight in a negative way with a bizarre response to a question.
During a question-and-answer session before the uniforms were revealed, Jonathan Gannon was praised for his ability to handle the media and asked if that comes from his time with the Philadelphia Eagles the past two seasons – implying that the Philadelphia media is tough to handle. Gannon acknowledged that Philadelphia is “a very hard media market,” and gave an example of that toughness.
“I’m very comfortable talking to the media,” Gannon said. “Philly is a very hard media market. We were 9-0 and I did my presser and they say, ‘Coach, we want you fired.’ And I said, ‘We’re the number one defense in the NFL right now, in every statistical category. Why do you want me fired?’ ‘You don’t blitz enough.’ I said, ‘Well we lead the league in sacks by thirty-plus sacks, so if you want to come call the defense, then you can have at it.’”
That would certainly be a very testy interaction, but as Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk points out, there’s no evidence that it ever happened.
“The Eagles send out every transcript of every assistant-coach press conference, and we couldn’t find any exchange like the one Gannon referenced,” Florio wrote on Friday.
It’s a pretty insane thing to lie about, and the NFL world wasn’t happy with Gannon as a result.
Tweeting this again bc we were not 9-0 ever were 8-1 also at week 9 we didn’t even lead in sacks let alone by 30 ( we did by the end of the season) #Eagles
— Philly Talk Podcast (@Philly_Mike25) April 22, 2023
That quite literally never happened. Thank goodness he’s in Arizona. pic.twitter.com/MwlFqmVPFD
— Gino Cammilleri (@GC24_Football) April 21, 2023
It’s safe to say the football world isn’t happy with him.
[Ari Meirov, Pro Football Talk]