The Arizona Cardinals are firing head coach Jonathan Gannon, the club announced Monday. The club concluded a 3-14 season on Sunday with a 37-20 loss to the Los Angeles Rams; following a 2-0 start, the Cardinals dropped 14 of their final 15 contests.
A first-time head coach hired after two seasons as the Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator, Gannon concluded his 3-year run with a 15-36 record and no playoff appearances, peaking with an 8-9 season in 2024.
Gannon's 3-year run and his .294 winning percentage fall in line with the Cardinals' historic performance for nearly a century now.
Since Charles Bidwill purchased the team in 1933, the club has employed 31 full-time head coaches, and 25 left with losing records. Among the coaches who could not win in Chicago, St. Louis or Arizona: Curly Lambeau (7-15 from 1950-51), Bud Wilkinson (145-29-4 at Oklahoma, but 9-20 in St. Louis), Gene Stallings (70-16-1 at Alabama; 23-34-1 in St. Louis and Arizona), Buddy Ryan (12-20 from 1994-95), and Dennis Green (16-32 from 2004-06).
In the modern era, the only coaches to win with the Cardinals are Don Coryell, who had two playoff appearances and four straight non-losing seasons before Coryell forced his way out after the 1977 season, and more recently, Bruce Arians. Arians went 49-30-1 from 2013-17 and took the Cardinals to the 2015 NFC Championship. In perhaps fitting fashion, Arians retired after the 2017 season, then un-retired a year later and led the Bucs to their second Super Bowl victory in 2020. (Ken Whisenhunt took the Cardinals to their only Super Bowl in 2008 but left with a losing record.)
Since Arians, the Cardinals have posted one winning season under three head coaches. Steve Wilks was a one-and-done, Kliff Kingsbury was fired a year after taking the club to the playoffs in 2021, and Gannon was sub-.500 in all three of his seasons.
Overall, the Cardinals have reached the playoffs six times since moving to Phoenix in 1988, and before that they reached the postseason four times in their 28 seasons in St. Louis.
Arizona will pick third in this spring's draft. Assuming they do not trade the pick, it will be the sixth time the Cardinals have selected in the top 10 in the past nine drafts.