Sources: The Eagles are furious with Jonathan Gannon after tampering case with Cardinals

Maybe C.J. Gardner-Johnson was right. Maybe Jonathan Gannon wasn’t focused on the Eagles during Super Bowl week.

The former Eagles safety, ever outspoken and always fearless, tweeted in March that Gannon “Ain’t put us in position to make plays” against the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII. Behind closed doors, according to league sources, the Eagles are starting to agree; they believe that Gannon might have been distracted.

Two months ago, they wished him good luck. Today, they wish him good riddance.

They are, in a word, furious.

Maybe a pending job offer to coach the Arizona Cardinals, illegally negotiated with the Super Bowl looming, distracted Gannon to the degree that his defense gave up 24 second-half points to a one-legged quarterback and a coach with a history of horrible halftime adjustments. Maybe that’s why the two star cornerbacks each gave up a touchdown on the same type of play in the second half. Maybe that’s why the Birds’ second-ranked defense blew a 10-point lead and didn’t get a stop after intermission.

Maybe that’s why Gannon, according to two NFL sources, was giddy at an otherwise morose afterparty at the team hotel in Phoenix. Maybe that’s why, in a few short weeks, Gannon has gone from the NFL’s offseason Golden Boy to the NFL’s no-socks laughingstock.

Gannon denied the assertion Thursday that he was distracted ... but, really, what else could he say? And how can you take him at his word? He lied at his introductory news conference, was just convicted of cheating, and seems to take every chance he can to put his un-socked foot in his untrustworthy mouth.

At any rate, many among the Eagles brain trust believe Gannon wasn’t all-in, according to two NFL sources.

League sources also say that the Eagles were hurt and angry when they learned this week that Gannon had interviewed with the Cardinals behind their backs when he was not allowed to do so. They were so angry that when the Eagles’ front office was initially offered compensation for tampering, it insisted on more, according to an NFL source with connections to the league office.

A different NFL source said Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and Cardinals owner Michael Bidwell negotiated directly until just hours before the 2023 NFL draft began Thursday night. The Eagles ultimately moved up from the 94th slot to the 66th slot in the draft — almost a full round.

The Eagles brass is irate that Gannon interviewed with the Cardinals via Zoom after the Eagles won the NFC championship game on Jan. 29; so, it happened either on Jan. 29, 30, or 31. After a first-week bye or the wild-card round, teams are forbidden to have initial interviews with head coaching candidates in the playoffs until the candidate’s team is eliminated.

Casual tampering happens all the time: on the sidelines before NFL games, at the NFL combines, at predraft pro days. More than anywhere else, though, it happens at Senior Bowl practices, where coaches and their staffs accompany general managers and scouts to Mobile, Ala. What once was the best pre-draft event for talent evaluation has devolved into an NFL job fair.

It does not happen when a team is preparing for the biggest sporting event on the planet. There’s good reason for that. Super Bowls demand focus. Eagles GM Howie Roseman refused to reveal his feelings Thursday, but Gannon’s former boss defended him.

“I know Gannon gave everything he had to that game. Everything he had for that Super Bowl, he gave to this team,” coach Nick Sirianni said. “I know where his heart was in it.”

Fine. What about his head?

Think about it.

Gannon had been an unknown defensive backs coach in 2020. Two years later, he’s looking at becoming one of 32 head coaches in the most powerful sports league in the history of mankind. He’s going to triple his salary. He’s going to have to move his wife and young family for the fourth time in 10 years. He’s going to front a team with myriad problems on and off the field, from flighty quarterback Kyler Murray to Bidwill, an unscrupulous man, at best.

Still, even if Gannon were to fail in Arizona, he’d almost certainly get another shot at being an NFL head coach; at the very least, he’ll write his own ticket as an NFL assistant the rest of this life.

He could not have been happy in Philly.

Gannon held the odd distinction of being an extremely successful Eagles coach who was almost universally despised by the fans. In 2021, as a first-time coordinator working virtually autonomously for first-time head coach Nick Sirianni, he cobbled together a defense decent enough to help win nine games and reach the playoffs. In 2022, his defense finished No. 2 overall and led the NFL with 70 sacks, third-most in league history.

However, a perceived lack of aggressiveness as a play-caller combined with weekly press sessions seasoned with condescension sparked an irrational hatred of Gannon among fans — a hatred fueled by local talk radio and TV analysts alike.

Maybe the talking heads were on to something. Condescension breeds contempt, and Philly can always smell a fraud.

These latest revelations also call into question a report that the Eagles offered Gannon more money to stay as their DC than the Cardinals offered him to be their head coach. Gannon confirmed this report, but, notably, the Eagles never have. In fact, league sources told me in the days after Gannon left that the Eagles’ front office was not sad to see him go. The Birds targeted and hired former Temple assistant Sean Desai.

One source told me three years ago that Lurie was critical of Jim Schwartz and his defense after it surrendered 505 yards and 33 points to the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, which the Eagles won. It’s hard to imagine Lurie giving Gannon a pay raise after Gannon’s sack-happy defense failed to hit Patrick Mahomes in Super Bowl LVII, which the Eagles lost.

It would take a man of exceptional rectitude to ignore a big promotion and focus on the Chiefs’ complex offense led by Mahomes, the league’s MVP. We can assume, therefore, that he did not ignore his impending life change.

That’s because the tampering conviction is just the latest example of Gannon’s questionable character and general bumbling.

After Game 1 of the 2022 season, Gannon implied that Howie Roseman influenced the Eagles’ game-planning: “‘We want to come out of the game kind of looking like this,’ and we do that with the head coach and with Howie.” In fact, Roseman simply consults with his coaches to determine which 47 or 48 players of the 53-man roster the team will dress, just like every other GM in the NFL.

After orchestrating a monumental second-half collapse in the Super Bowl, Gannon avoided the media and left his players to take the heat.

At his introductory interview as Cardinals head coach in February, Gannon told a bald-faced lie about his candidacy in Arizona. He said he didn’t know the Cardinals were interested in him until immediately after the Super Bowl ended, when Roseman told him.

Last week, while addressing an assemblage of Cardinals season ticket holders, Gannon whined about critical media coverage while coaching in Philadelphia. He illustrated his persecution with a fictional news conference in which he said his questioners told him they wanted him fired (that was mostly talk radio fodder). In aggrandizing himself, he cited inaccurate and impossible statistics: He said the Eagles led the NFL by 30 sacks (they never did) at a point when they had only 29 sacks, which meant that the next closest team would have had minus-1 sack.

Gannon just signed on to coach the NFL’s worst team for Bidwill, who has inherited outgoing Washington boss Daniel Snyder’s title as LSO: League’s Skeeviest Owner: Bidwill faces allegations of racism, misogyny, workplace misconduct, and skirting NFL punishments for employees. Gannon was hired, in part, to help change the Cardinals’ culture.

Instead, it looks like he’ll fit right in.