When they last saw each other on the football field in a game that mattered, Indianapolis Colts’ coach Shane Steichen and Arizona Cardinals’ coach Jonathan Gannon were coaching the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl.
It was 2022. Steichen was Philly’s offensive coordinator while Gannon ran the defense. They were considered among the best young head coaching prospects available at the time.
Both were hired into their current positions after the 2022 season and have struggled to build consistent winners. Apart from a preseason game last year, the two former colleagues face off against each other for the first time on Sunday when Gannon brings his 2-3 Cardinals to Indianapolis.
Jonathan Gannon brings the Cardinals to the Indianapolis Colts with a lot on the line
They come in on very different trajectories, and these are not the trajectories that most analysts predicted before the season began. Steichen has his Colts riding high, tied for first place in the AFC South with an impressive 4-1 record.
Gannon, whose Cardinals were chosen by some to be the surprise team in the NFC West this year, is struggling mightily. It has gotten bad enough that his name is beginning to show up on the dreaded “hot seat” lists.
Prior to the season, if you had been told one of the two former Eagles coordinators would be facing calls for his job just five weeks into the 2025 campaign, you almost certainly would have thought Steichen would be the coach in trouble.
Despite entering this year with a decidedly better record than Gannon, the Colts seemed to be treading water. They were 9-8 in Steichen’s first season and 8-9 in his second.
Meanwhile, Gannon seemed to have Arizona stock on the rise. He had the same 8-9 mark as Steichen in 2024, but that was coming on the heels of a 4-13 record in 2023. He was building a quality defense and finally providing Kyler Murray with potent weapons on offense. The Cardinals won their first two games, and everything seemed on track.
Then, disaster struck. Amazing as it may seem, Arizona has lost three straight games to field goals on the final play. In two of them, they had the lead, but could not stop their opponents from driving into field goal range.
In the third, a bad kickoff by Chad Ryland set Seattle up on the 40-yard line with under 30 seconds to go in a tie game. Again, Gannon’s defense failed to stop a winning field goal drive.
Seattle is now 2-3 and has lost all three games by a total of five points.
If fans could take some satisfaction out of the fact that Gannon had his team ready to play highly competitive games against both San Francisco and Seattle, it all came crashing down last week in a disastrous outing against the Tennessee Titans.
At home against last year’s worst team, Arizona imploded. Eight penalties. Three turnovers. Another defensive collapse in the final two minutes against a rookie quarterback and one of the worst offenses in the league. It was a nightmare for Gannon.
His frustration blew up early in the fourth quarter when running back Emari Demercado turned a sure touchdown into a turnover by carelessly fumbling the ball just before he crossed the goal line after a 72-yard run.
That is not a misprint. I am not confusing this with the Colts’ AD Mitchell and his virtually identical play against the Rams a week earlier. Demercado did the exact same thing. And his coach, despite holding a 21-6 lead in the fourth quarter, exploded.
The head coach sought out the running back as he was being consoled by teammates and lit into him for close to ten seconds. His anger was on full display. It was bad enough that Gannon felt the need to publicly apologize to Demercado after the game.
A few days later, it was reported that the Cardinals had fined their head coach one hundred thousand dollars for his outburst. I don’t know about you, but that is the part of the story that I find truly extraordinary, and that is what makes me think that Gannon is genuinely on the hot seat.
I can’t recall another coach being fined such a large amount for essentially yelling at a player who had made a bonehead play.
Gannon is a good coach. I think he gets his teams prepared to play hard week in and week out. But that Titans' fiasco was a potential game-changer. Consider Shane Steichen’s reaction to AD Mitchell’s blunder. It was also largely responsible for the Colts’ failing to get a massive win, but Steichen took it in stride.
Gannon let his emotions get away from him, and then his team’s play plummeted. As successful as he has been, there are still major weaknesses on the Cardinals’ roster. A game like that – a moment like that – and the club’s reaction after the fact, all hint at something deeper going on in the desert.
Gannon could really use a win to halt his club’s freefall and turn down the heat. Unfortunately, this week he takes on his former colleague’s Colts, who are looking like one of the best teams in the league early in the 2025 season. No one ever would have thought it just six weeks ago.