New Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon wasn’t afraid to let the world know of one major change coming to the offense in 2023.
Last week, Gannon was hired as the Cardinals’ new head coach following a successful two-year run as the Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive coordinator. Gannon replaces Kliff Kingsbury, who was let go after four years at the helm.
During an interview with NBC Sports’ Peter King for the latest “Football Morning In America” column, Gannon revealed that they won’t be using quarterback Murray in shotgun “all the time.” Gannon cited the need to make things more difficult for opposing defenses:
“If Kyler Murray isn’t here, I don’t take this job. I think this offense will look much different. This guy does things that it completely handcuffs you how you play defense – at times. I think we can take him to another level and unleash his full skill set. We’re not gonna put him in gun all the time, I’ll tell you that. We’ll have two significant offenses with his skill set: one being under center and one being in the gun. Then obviously we’re gonna do what’s comfortable with him.
The way to take pressure off the quarterback and the O-line is to put him under center at times. That’s the missing piece I thought they had with Kyler. They were in gun all the time. When you’re in gun all the time, you don’t make the defense defend certain play types. Now, when you get him under center, the defense has to defend a lot more type of play types. So there’s really two offenses I see us using.”
Murray had his fair share of “wow” moments during Kingsbury’s four-year run as head coach, but the Cardinals had a bad habit of regressing in the second half of the year. They started out 5-2 in 2020 but went 3-6 the rest of the way and missed out on the postseason.
In 2021, the Cardinals jumped out to a perfect 7-1 start but lost four of their final five regular season games. Though Arizona made the postseason for the first time in six years, they were clobbered 34-11 by the Los Angeles Rams on Wild Card Weekend.
Gannon is aware that Arizona’s offense has to change one way or another in 2023. Actually executing that is a different story.
