Call it a culture shock or a culture change. Both phrases have been used by Cardinals players lately to describe what new coach Jonathan Gannon and GM Monti Ossenfort have done since taking over in Arizona earlier this year.
But culture shift is probably the appropriate phrase for this story, because Gannon didn’t waste a second jumping into the stadium cart that was parked behind me on the floor level of State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., the location of my second stop for my nine-team training camp tour.
From the jump—literally—Gannon flashed his energetic and decisive sides, leaving no option of whether to stand or sit for this interview with Sports Illustrated. Gannon took the driver’s side and shifted to his left to leave enough room for me to ask about the team culture.
Most of Gannon’s answers came off enthusiastically, but he didn’t have much to say about the many people counting out his team from Super Bowl and playoff contention before his first game as coach.
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“Like, I really couldn't care less,” Gannon says about outside perception.
Got it. No need to say more.
The Cardinals are here to compete in 2023, despite the many attempts by the doubters to fast-forward their season to the ’24 draft, which has plenty of intrigue due to the second first-round pick Ossenfort added during a draft-day trade with the Texans.
Gannon described his new partnership with Ossenfort as fantastic before raving about his approach as a general manager.
“He’s very open, honest, communicates very effectively and swiftly,” Gannon says. “He doesn’t have to say what he needs to say in three sentences. He says it in one and keeps us on the same page.”
Ossenfort might be a straight-to-the-point kind of guy in most cases, but he had plenty more to say about those counting out the 2023 Cardinals than Gannon. They had different responses, but it was evident that both are growing tired of hearing about next year.
“I think all of us are pretty self-motivated to begin with,” Ossenfort says. “I don’t think we need anything outside to give us an extra push. We’re all here competing. We’re here in these positions because we earned the opportunity to be here, and now it’s up to us to prove that we belong here. We’re here to win. And we’re here to build our football program.
“We’re here to build a core of players that we can move forward with, not only this year, but next year. There’s no talk of, ‘Hey, wait until next year, or we’re rebuilding.’ There's none of that. Like, we are here, trying to put [together] the most competitive 53-man roster that we can, and we’re gonna go out there and we’re gonna compete, and we’re gonna fight, and we’re gonna do things the right way. That’s what we’re focused on.”
Again, understood. The Cardinals are here to compete in 2023.
But they do have an uphill battle with a young roster, and it doesn’t help that their franchise quarterback, Kyler Murray, might miss most of the season while he recovers from the torn ACL he sustained in December. Similar to the 2024 draft, Murray’s recovery timeline and future with the organization are also popular story lines in Arizona.
“He’s doing good,” Gannon says about Murray. “I love to be around the guy. We got a good relationship, and he’s champing at the bit, but he knows what he’s got to do day by day to get back to where he needs to get back to before he can go out there. Taking it one day at a time, and I’m very pleased with his effort and his discipline and commitment to doing what he needs to do to get himself ready to go.”
Soon we’ll find out whether the public opinions about the Cardinals are correct when it comes to competing in games with quarterbacks Colt McCoy and rookie Clayton Tune possibly starting the bulk of the season.
But the Cardinals have already had plenty of success during the first offseason of the Ossenfort-Gannon partnership.
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Gannon has already gotten his players to buy into his team philosophy, evident by all the talk of culture change, shock and shift. And Ossenfort’s first draft class is already showing promise, with Tune, wide receiver Michael Wilson and tackle Paris Johnson Jr. all in contention for starting jobs.
But the biggest win of the offseason, and it involves the 2024 draft, was Ossenfort trading his No. 3 pick this year to the Texans for their first-round pick next year, meaning Arizona could have two high picks in a potentially loaded draft class that could feature wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. and quarterbacks Caleb Williams and Drake Maye. But, obviously, that would require the Cardinals and the Texans to be bad this season.
“The thing that I’ll just remember mostly about that night is how prepared our staff had been,” Ossenfort says about the opening round of the 2023 draft. “How ready we were for the moment. I think always for trades to happen it takes another team to eventually make that happen, so things fell our way, and we found trading partners, but I think everyone in the room that we had prepared for that draft [and] that we were ready.
“We had talked about a bunch of scenarios, if this happens or this happens, what would we do here, and we had talked about trades, and what we would give up, and what we would need to make a trade. I think the biggest thing that I hope we can duplicate is just the readiness for any scenario that presents itself.”
Any scenario including the Cardinals being the surprise team of 2023, not 2024.
