HC Jonathan Gannon Press Conference – 9.29.25 | AZ Cardinals

HC Jonathan Gannon Press Conference – 9.29.25 | AZ Cardinals

Coach, when we brought up the investments in the defensive line room, you’ve been quick in the past to remind us about Bal and Justin Jones still being in the building. Now that you have Bal back in the mix, what does he bring to this room? He’s a good football player. Um can play couple different hats for us. So, um good to have him back out there today. Uh he plays the way you want to play. Um he’s got energy and juice, so it was good to see him out there. Coach, you talked about maybe doing a little bit more of an in-depth self scout over the weekend and get guys on. What did you guys come up with in terms of moving forward? Now, we got some adjustments. I’m not going to tell you. Craig, are you um first day to open that window for a lot of guys? Are you concerned that Walter is not yet ready to practice? No. You have a lot of experience last year playing against rookie quarterbacks. What can you learn or what did you learn from facing some of those guys? And is there anything that that could help you with facing against the first overall pick this year? Not really in my opinion. They’re all different. They’re all in different systems. All have different skill sets being coached differently. So big time challenge. He’s a good player. When a team comes in 0 and4, are they desperate? Is there is there a sense that they’re they’re still an NFL team? How do you look at that? Yeah, when you when you turn on a tape, it catches our guys’ attention. This is uh I know their record, you know, where they’re at right now, but they got really good coaches, really good players, and we’re going to have to play probably our best game to date to beat them. J, you saw Will Johnson out there today. Just um is he trending in the right direction? Yeah. Um we’ll take it day by day with him. You know, I I I I understand the the phrase. Um I’m very careful to say he’s trending in the right direction. Um he’s taking it day by day. He’s doing a good job. Hopefully, we’ll get him back out there. You obviously talk a lot about motor and violence, mode of play. How did you think those things were on Thursday night? Really good. Really good. We didn’t uh technique wasn’t so good, so we got to clean up some techniques. Uh, didn’t see Trey Benson out there. Anything going on with him? Just taking it day by day. We’ll have the kind of that full report for you guys on Wednesday. Kind of an extra day today. So, you talked about technique stuff. Is that is that what’s going on with the run game? Is it mostly technique? What’s happening there? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the first step pad level pointing it the right way. You got, you know, some technique things that come up, some schematic things that come up. um you know, off here or there a little bit, you know, uh playing penalty-free, you know, so we just got to uptick everything that we’re doing to get the run game going. It seems like there’s a decent number of plays in the run game where someone is unblocked. And I’m not talking about like an unblocked edge, that’s intentional, like a linebacker. Is that a concern to you? The number of plays? No, that’s kind of talking into the pointing to make sure we’re pointing the right way. And a lot of times, you know, um I am going to get into it a little bit, Craig. Um you know, we we have to make sure that we’re all on the same page when um we’re making calls at the line of scrimmage. Um so that’s been good to us um in the past. Uh but it’s not where it needs to be right now, but very correctable. So, um, we we do got to make sure that we don’t have unblocked players that we think we have accounted for that are not accounted for. JJ, Michael Carter was wearing number 40. Pat Del Tman’s number just uh what was the reasoning behind giving him that jersey? He was a baller two weeks ago. We didn’t he he really got that he earned that award um San Francisco week and then he didn’t wear it last week because we didn’t practice so he’s wearing it this week. So, um, I love Mike. He’s a he loves playing ball and he does he does an excellent job for us. You’ve talked a lot about him and the how he maximizes all of his opportunities. You didn’t have a spot for him on the opening 53 roster. How happy are you to kind of just emotionally to be able to give him that news and bubble him up today? Huge. Yeah, he got a he got a standing ovation. All those guys do, but uh Mike’s an integral part of this team. Um, and like I said, like when you got guys that when their number is called is performed, they start their role, uh, they have a good attitude. They’re team first guys. You can’t have enough of those guys around. He’s one of them. Going back to, uh, the game on on Thursday, uh, when you scored the touchdown to go down by eight, certain analytics would say go for two there. Why did you decide not to go for two? Uh, we talked about it. That’s a good point, Teao. Um, it was a discussion. We’ve went back I’ve went back and forth. A little bit of game flow to that one. Um, I liked putting another point on the board and putting it where it was at that point in the game. But that’s a that’s a good point. There’s a lot of discussion around that. Not in our building, just around the world, truthfully. No, it’s it’s it’s real. That’s it’s a good point. Some games we might

HC Jonathan Gannon addresses the media ahead of Week 5 vs the Tennessee Titans.

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