Gannon, hired before the 2023 season, had a 5-16 record through his first 21 games. He has a 5-1 record since then, beating the San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Chargers, Miami Dolphins (with Tua Tagovailoa), Chicago Bears and New York Jets. The last two victories, over the Bears and Jets, were by a 60-15 combined mark. Arizona could be turning a corner.
Campbell started 4-16-1 in his first 21 games with the Lions and has gone 28-11 since then.
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• Both coaches’ starting quarterbacks had played well enough previously to earn top-of-market contracts, before faltering enough to see their reputations bottom out. Jared Goff (despite his five-interception game Sunday night) is flourishing in Detroit. Kyler Murray, slammed for having a “homework clause” written into (and later out of) his contract, seems to have matured. He turned memes about his supposedly overboard affinity for the “Call of Duty” franchise into a sponsorship deal with the video game.
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• Both coaches work with general managers poached from Super Bowl teams (Brad Holmes in Detroit, Monti Ossenfort in Arizona). Both GMs used their first draft choices for offensive tackles (Penei Sewell in Detroit, Paris Johnson in Arizona).
• Both coaches trusted first-time coordinators on both sides of the ball.
He’s just so goofy and weird. As a personality type he couldn’t be more different than Dan.
But there’s no doubt he’s gotten everything moving in a good direction for them, and there’s similarities to the way both were received after they were hired (that is, lukewarm at best). And both latched onto young up-and-coming OCs for sure.
I thought this last season, the Cardinals were bereft of talent but played hard, took a couple of notable scalps and generally played above their talent level. It wasn’t too far away from our 2021 season in that regard.
Ossenfort is a Patriots guy and the Bidwells are dreadful owners but it certainly looks like the Cards are building something good there. Their losses this season are against the 8-2 Bills, us, the 7-3 Commanders and the 6-3 Packers, none of which are bad at all for a team in the second year of their rebuild.
Cardinals are molding into a good team.
They do have a lot of the same traits from
the last couple of games. But can they keep
it up. Murry is fine as long as its going well?
The Cardinals did okay under Ken Whisenhunt until Kurt Warner retired and he didn’t seem to know a thing about developing a QB. Then they did well under Bruce Arians.
Mike Bidwell is better than his dad. The more recent issues with the Cardinals stem from Mike’s extreme loyalty to his good friend Steve Keim, who was a horrible GM. It’s also rumored that Keim and Arians had a power struggle which caused Arians to want out.
I don’t think Bidwell and Ossenfort are drinking buddies which probably is helpful in the Cardinals situation. While Ossenfort is from the Patriots his drafts have been exponentially better than Bob Quinn’s and the Cardinals don’t have a Patriot Way HC.
Gannon is weird but he doesn’t seem like an asshole and the players seem to like him and play hard for him (even last season they played very hard for him).
I heard a former player say yesterday that the most important thing about a coaches personality is…authenticity. A coach can be quirky and weird as long as that is who he is, and not a character he is trying to play. And if a guy is quirky, he can’t “fake” being Bill Parcells. The players see thru it.
The guy who does the locked on lions pod cast did a show with the cardinals guy back in the off season. The cardinals guy did a pretty Good break down of how they were basically using Detroit as a blue print. Smart. Thankfully the Bears brass are to stupid to follow us.