Veteran players insist they'll be leading the way and policing the locker room during team's rebuild
Bob McManamanArizona Republic
Sometimes, perception is everything. And following back-to-back rollercoaster seasons that ended in chaos and culpability, resulting in an epic housecleaning from top to bottom, the perception surrounding the Arizona Cardinals wasn’t very good at all.
In fact, it had become downright hideous.
But as soon as General Manager Monti Ossenfort was hired to lead a revamped front office and, more striking, when Jonathan Gannon was hired to lead a mostly brand-new coaching staff, the Cardinals began undergoing a culture shift throughout the organization.
“Oh, definitely. Definitely,” veteran left tackle D.J. Humphries said. “It’s been a culture shock. It ain’t even been no gradual shift. It’s shock. It’s ‘Get ready or get going.’ ”
It started with a “Team-First or Else” mantra and it’s continued with Gannon demanding absolute accountability at every turn. There’s no room for eye-rollers and goldbricks. If you’re not fully onboard, you’re getting swept off the ship and the Cardinals will set sail without you.
“You can’t be 30 seconds late to a meeting. You can’t be five minutes late to a meeting,” third-year linebacker Zaven Collins said. “You need to be better at taking care of your stuff without being guided. We’re grown men doing this thing. It’s small things like that that. Even if it’s the small things, you can’t get away from it.
“So, it’s the culture and everyone’s held accountable. They have to be, because if they’re held accountable in the locker room, they’re going to be held accountable on the field.”
Being late to meetings or not being ready to go at the start of practice isn’t directly what led to the Cardinals losing 19 of their last 24 games overall, including one playoff appearance. But it didn’t help, and those weren’t the only unprofessional lapses that began piling up. There were off-the-field issues involving both players and coaches, ongoing other distractions and too many “me-first” problems.
The culture shift — or shock — is real, and veteran running back James Conner is seeing it spread.
“It’s accountability. Just togetherness,” he said. “Mastering the basics in our foundation and realizing what wins football games. That’s being really disciplined, it’s being in shape and just being accountable to your teammates.
“We have one goal: that’s to win. I’m in and we put the team first. That’s our message. That’s what we’re preaching — team first and we come second. Everything is about putting the team first and not getting in your own way.”
For Gannon, who is in his first season as a head coach at any level, crafting the right message and approach has been a project upon which he’s worked years to define. His high-energy, frenetic style helps ensure his directive never gets lost or tuned out.
“I don’t know about what went on in the past,” Gannon said, “but I know the standards that we’ve laid out for the entire team, they’re doing a really good job of trying to improve and get better with that on a daily basis. So overall, very, very pleased with where we’re at with that.
“Culture is how you behave on a daily basis. You’re either behaving in a winning way or not.”
Gannon is direct and he’s blunt. And while he’s usually always talking and coaching with a positive tone and encouraging body language, he won’t tolerate any stragglers to the system. He is where the Cardinals’ new culture starts and where it will go from here.
“It’s JG. That’s it,” Humphries said, nodding. “You know. You met him. It’s either you’re going to be like that or you’re going to go home. It’s that simple. That’s the mentality, so it makes it easy. Especially when you got older guys like me and Budda (Baker) and all those guys that are buying into the system.
“When you have your leaders that are falling into that mode, there’s nobody left behind you that’s going to buck the system when they see guys like me, guys like K1 (Kyler Murray) and Budda that are falling into place and doing everything right. They’re going to do the same thing.”
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Veteran right guard Will Hernandez said Gannon’s message is being universally spread by all the assistant coaches, whom he calls some of the best he’s been around during his six NFL seasons. He called the entire staff “the real deal,” adding, “We believe in them. We’re a team and we practice like it and the goal is to play like it all season long.”
“You have to believe it 100 percent,” Hernandez said of the Cardinals’ team-first directive. “Each guy has to believe it 100 percent for us to actually work and that’s exactly what we’re doing. That’s what’s been implemented from the beginning. Guys have bought in. Guys are fighting for each other. Guys are understanding that letting another teammate down that it’s a Cardinal rule you don’t do that, you don’t let your buddy down.”
Is it working, though?
“We just started training camp so it may take some time,” veteran tackle Kelvin Beachum said, “but I think we’re doing the things that are necessary to put us in those situations to accomplish winning behavior — being on time, making sure nobody’s getting fined.”
Will this new approach lead to more victories than last season’s 4-13 woebegone disaster? Nobody’s giving the Cardinals much of a chance in 2023. But that’s OK. You’ve got to start somewhere, and this football team just happens to be starting over.
“We don’t give a (expletive) about outside perceptions of the team,” Humphries said.
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It’s going to be a process, however long it takes.
“You’ve got to go out there and prove yourself,” Collins said. “A lot of people doubt us and that’s OK. Whether you’re the best team or the worst team, people are going to doubt you, so you’ve got to just go out there and take it day by day and apply your work.”
And if you’re not doing you work, you can expect to hear about it from Gannon.
“I’ve never even seen JG not talk full speed. That’s who he is,” Humphries said. “It’s not like a persona, like, ‘I’m going to sell this to the media.’ That’s who he is for real. It’s refreshing for me and it’s good to be around, because that bleeds over. That’s something that’s infectious to everyone that’s around.”
