Less than a week before the NFL Draft, new Arizona Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon declared during a question-and-answer session that he was “very comfortable talking to the media” after dealing with the “hard media market” in Philadelphia during his two seasons with the Eagles. If that was true, he sure didn’t show it during this weekend’s NFL Draft.
As Josh Weinfuss of ESPN pointed out on Twitter on Saturday evening following the draft’s conclusion, Gannon did not speak to the media at any point during the three days of the NFL Draft, which is certainly unusual of an NFL head coach.
“Interesting move by the Cardinals during the draft: head coach Jonathan Gannon did not speak to the media after any of the three days. First time that’s happened, that I remember, in my 12 drafts,” Weinfuss said in a tweet on Sunday afternoon.
I don’t remember the HC not being available and I go back a few more drafts than that.
— Kent Somers (@kentsomers) April 30, 2023
Retired Cardinals reporter and columnist Kent Somers, who wrote for The Arizona Republic for decades, echoed Weinfuss’ surprise, saying that he did not remember a time in his entire career that the team’s head coach did not speak to the media at any time during the NFL Draft.
While the league’s media access policy does not specifically require a head coach to speak to the media at the NFL Draft, it’s certainly become the expectation and every other coach made time for press interviews over the weekend.
Between this move and the heat he took for detailing an encounter with the Philadelphia media that does not appear to have actually happened, he’s certainly off to a rocky start with the media since becoming the team’s head coach.
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