Blogging The Boys
Brian Schottenheimer is at a crossroads. His first season on the job as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys showed some promise, but there was a fatal flaw: the defense. With a slightly better defense this past year, Dallas wins at least four more games, giving them 11 wins and surely a spot in the postseason.
It’s why Matt Eberflus was fired after just one year. And if Schottenheimer can’t get things right on that side of the ball, people will start to question when Schottenheimer joins his former coordinator. Fair or not, that’s the way this league operates.
As rumors continue to percolate, there seems to be a growing trend in this coordinator search: that the top two candidates are Jim Leonhard and Jonathan Gannon. We previously laid out why Leonhard would be a home run hire, giving the Cowboys their own version of Vikings mastermind Brian Flores.
Gannon, however, would be a disastrous hire.
The recently-fired Cardinals head coach was already one of five names we warned against. Now that he’s getting serious consideration, though, Gannon’s track record merits a deeper dive.
Just 43 years old, Gannon has had a meteoric rise in the coaching ranks. A former safety at Louisville, Gannon transitioned to a coach after an injury ended his playing career. When Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino took the head coaching job with the Falcons, he brought Gannon along as a quality control coach.
There, Gannon was working under defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer. Later that season, Petrino controversially stepped down to go back to college and coach Arkansas (a tenure that also ended in controversy for Petrino). At the time, Zimmer had little positive to say about the coach.
Gannon spent the next two years at the bottom of the totem pole with the Titans before being hired as the assistant defensive backs in Minnesota, not long after Zimmer was hired as the head coach. After four seasons there, Gannon was named the defensive backs coach in Indianapolis under newly-hired coordinator Matt Eberflus.
Yes, that Matt Eberflus.
That was the same Colts staff that featured Nick Sirianni as the offensive coordinator, though head coach Frank Reich called plays on offense. When Sirianni was hired to coach the Eagles, he brought Gannon with him as his defensive coordinator.
One of the first things Gannon did in running his own defense was establish a mantra: HITS. It stood for Hustle, Intensity, Takeaways, and Smart. It encapsulated everything he wanted his defense to be about. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the exact same thing Eberflus preached in Indianapolis, later taking the mantra to Chicago and then to Dallas.
There lies the first big problem with Gannon: he is, in many ways, an Eberflus disciple. He spent more time working with Zimmer, but Gannon has been candid about how much he’s taken from Eberflus. So why would the Cowboys replace Eberflus with him?
Putting that burning red flag aside, Gannon’s run as the Eagles defensive coordinator was...
