Acme Packing Company
If you haven’t heard, the Green Bay Packers have hired former Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon to be Jeff Hafley’s replacement as the team’s next defensive coordinator. Here, I want to take the time to look at Gannon’s entire coaching journey and find some long-term connections that he’s had with other coaches before we get into deeper topics about Gannon’s defense later on this week.
Coaching, inherently, is a very social field. Relationships mean a lot. There are also very few NFL coaches roaming this planet, so there’s cross-pollination everywhere. Those crossovers can generally tell you a lot about who a coach is.
Gannon’s original plan was to be a football player, not a football coach. As a safety at Louisville, Gannon suffered a hip injury that “compared to Bo Jackson’s career-changing injury,” according to ESPN, near the end of his second season with the program. The season after, 2003, new Cardinals head coach Bobby Petrino brought Gannon along as a student assistant, a role he held for three years. In 2006, Gannon became a graduate assistant, and then in 2007, Petrino made the jump to the NFL and took over the Atlanta Falcons.
Gannon followed Petrino to Atlanta, cutting his teeth for the first time at the professional level as a defensive quality control coach. Petrino didn’t coach the full year, resigning after a 3-10 record to take the Arkansas job. Petrino didn’t tell any of his assistants that he was splitting to return to the college level, which…really makes 2007 Falcons defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer mad to this day.
In 2010, Zimmer had two quotes that still come up whenever anyone talks about Petrino. The first is: “He’s a gutless bastard. Quote that. I don’t give a shit.” The second is: “He is a coward. Put that in quotes. He ruined a bunch of people’s lives, a bunch of people’s families, kids, because he didn’t have enough nuts to stay there and finish the job. That’s the truth.”
Needless to say, the Falcons turned over their staff in 2008. In 2009, Gannon joined the St. Louis Rams, led by general manager Bill Devaney, as a scout. Devaney had previously been the Falcons’ assistant general manager during Gannon’s time with the team.
After three years as a scout, Gannon gave pro coaching another try, even if he had to start at the bottom of the ladder again. He was brought to the Tennessee Titans as their defensive quality control coach, where he crossed paths with Jerry Gray, who at the time was the Titans’ defensive coordinator. Gray was Mike Pettine’s defensive backs coach in 2020 and Joe Barry’s pass game coordinator in 2021 and 2022 with the Packers.
In 2014, Gannon took his first step up the coaching ladder, becoming the assistant defensive backs coach for the Minnesota Vikings. His head coach? Mike Zimmer. His defensive backs coach? Jerry Gray. The coaching tree is finally starting to take shape at this point.
Over four seasons, the Vikings went...
