GREEN BAY — When Jonathan Gannon first interviewed for the Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator job in 2021, his response to Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni was as surprising as it was succinct.

I don’t have a scheme.

No, really. That’s what he said. And Sirianni must’ve liked what he heard, because he wound up hiring Gannon for the job.

“When I got here, I didn’t drop a book on the table and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re running,’” Gannon later explained. “If you actually ask the head coach, when we first talked about this when he interviewed me, it was, ‘Hey, what scheme are you going to run?’ I said, ‘I don’t have a scheme.’ [Because] I believe that you have to be adaptable.

“The first thing is we’ve got to figure out what our players can do, and then we’ve got to put them in those situations as much as possible to utilize their strengths. The main thing for us is, it’s not what we play. It’s how we play.”

If that sounds vaguely familiar to Green Bay Packers fans, it should. Because the guy that head coach Matt LaFleur is interviewing Gannon to potentially replace — new Miami Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley — views defense through the same lens.

Hafley talked about that philosophy many times during his two-year stint as defensive coordinator, and did so as recently as last month, when asked how he would alter his approach after losing first-team All-Pro defensive end Micah Parsons to a season-ending ACL tear in his left knee in mid-December.

“The way I look at it — and I’ve said this to you guys before — I don’t have a playbook where I say, ‘This is the playbook, this is what we’re running,’” Hafley said. “Here’s what I believe my job is to do: Figure out who’s in the room and how to put those players in the best position to succeed and each week figure out the best way to win the game. That’s what I believe is my job to do as the defensive coordinator.

“So if we had a certain player with a skillset, I need to figure out how to use it to take advantage of what we need to do to win. Different players, whatever we need to do to win. If that’s new scheme, it’s new scheme. If it’s putting guys in new positions, it’s putting them in new positions. If it’s putting certain guys in position to make more plays, that’s my job. And it doesn’t matter how long I have. I need to figure it out. And that’s what we’re looking to do.”

The 43-year-old Gannon is the fourth reported candidate to interview for Hafley’s old job, along with:

Former Packers defensive quality control assistant Christian Parker, who had been the Eagles’ defensive passing-game coordinator and was hired Thursday as the Dallas Cowboys’ new defensive coordinator;

Packers Hall of Fame cornerback Al Harris, who spent five seasons with the Cowboys on ex-Packers head coach Mike McCarthy’s staff and is currently the Chicago Bears defensive passing-game coordinator;

Minnesota Vikings defensive passing-game coordinator Daronte Jones, a former University of Wisconsin defensive backs coach.

Gannon spent the last three seasons as the Arizona Cardinals head coach, going 15-36 (a .294 winning percentage) before being fired on Jan. 5 at the end of a frustrating 3-14 season during which he was also fined $100,000 by the Cardinals for a sideline altercation with running back Emari Demercado after Demercado’s goal-line fumble in a 22-21 loss to Tennessee.

One of the Cardinals’ 14 losses was a 27-23 loss to LaFleur and the Packers on Oct. 19, a game in which LaFleur’s offense gained just 262 total yards and went 3 for 10 on third down. Quarterback Jordan Love completed 19 of 29 passes for just 179 yards while Packers running backs managed just 72 rushing yards on 19 attempts.

“From an offensive standpoint, it was a very frustrating day overall,” LaFleur said after the game. “They did a hell of a job of keeping an umbrella on [us]. There weren’t many looks where we could throw the ball down the field.

“It was one of those dink-and-dunk type games. Not that we didn’t get a couple shots downfield, but they were playing pretty soft, and they took a lot of things that we wanted to do or that we saw on tape away. [They] tried to make us play perfect, which we were far from perfect. So, give credit to them. I got a lot of respect for those guys. Gannon, I think, does a hell of a job.”

Before getting his first head-coaching job, Gannon spent three seasons in the then-St. Louis Rams’ scouting department (2009-’11) before working as a defensive quality control coach with the Tennessee Titans (2012-’13), the assistant defensive backs coach for the Minnesota Vikings (2014-’17) and the Indianapolis Colts’ defensive backs coach (2018-’20) before getting the Eagles defensive coordinator job.

Among his greatest influences are ex-Bears head coach Matt Eberflus, whom he worked for in Indianapolis; Emmitt Thomas and Jerry Gray, both of whom spent time as assistants in Green Bay; and ex-Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer.

“Coach Zimmer has a very specific vision of how he wants to play defense, and I agree with a lot of that vision,” Gannon said in 2021. “[That’s] not to say that we’re going to be exactly what Mike Zimmer was, because I feel like there’s a lot of other good things that I’ve learned throughout the years that complement actually what Zim does. That’s probably part of our package, but we’re not going to box ourselves into one scheme.”

In Gannon’s first year as the Eagles’ defensive coordinator, Philadelphia finished 18th in scoring defense (22.6 points per game) and 10th in total defense (328.8 yards per game). A year later, the Eagles were eighth in scoring defense (20.2 points per game) and second in total defense (301.5 yards per game) on their way to a berth in the Super Bowl.

In Arizona, the Cardinals defenses finished 31st, 15th and 29th in scoring defense during his three seasons and 25th, 21st and 27th in total defense.

“I believe in this team. Yeah, the results haven’t been there, but I haven’t lost confidence. I really haven’t,” Gannon said before the Cardinals’ season-ending loss to the Los Angeles Rams. “We’ll look at everything that we’re doing when it’s time to do that and make adjustments, because I always say I’m not going to keep going down doing the same thing.

“I have to look at everything, and I take it on the chin. I’m responsible for everything that goes on in that building, so ultimately that’s my responsibility.”