We’ll have more stuff on the hiring of new Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon throughout the week, as there are a lot of angles to examine for what should be the biggest move that the Packers make in the 2026 offseason, but I want to get this one up quickly, because it’s a one-off I believe is interesting. After the Dallas Cowboys hired their own new defensive coordinator, Christian Parker, Nick Harris of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, who currently works on the Cowboys’ beat and used to work for DallasCowboys.com, spoke to why Dallas didn’t end up hiring Gannon on a podcast.
There are a couple of reasons I think a Cowboys perspective on Gannon would be worth entertaining. First of all, of the Packers’ three known outside interviews for their defensive coordinator search, Dallas brought in three of them (Gannon, Parker and Minnesota Vikings pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach Daronte Jones). The only outside candidate that Green Bay reportedly interviewed who wasn’t a Dallas prospect was Chicago Bears pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach Al Harris, who was with the Cowboys from 2020 to 2024 as their defensive backs coach.
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Secondly, Dallas got a jump on the Packers in their defensive coordinator search, as Matt Eberflus was fired by the team on January 6th. Green Bay’s vacancy didn’t open until January 19th, when Jeff Hafley took the Miami Dolphins’ head coaching opportunity. Because of that, the Cowboys made their hire of Parker on January 22nd, a day before Gannon even had his interview with the Packers. They were able to get a better scope of the market faster, which is completely independent of whether they made the right decision or not (only time will tell).
Third, and possibly most important, is that Dallas and Green Bay are on opposite sides of the secrecy spectrum. Things are mostly tight-lipped with the Packers. Meanwhile, Jerry Jones runs his mouth and tells people whatever he thinks at any given moment. He has no problem complaining about Micah Parsons’ run defense after trading him away, even if he mistakenly calls him Michael double-digit times in a press conference. Jones has leaked the Cowboys’ draft board FOUR different times. There would be heart attacks at 1265 if that ever happened in Green Bay. To say the least, Dallas is a little more loose and media-friendly to the press that hangs around the team, based on conversations I’ve had with members of both beats.
Here’s how the Cowboys viewed Gannon, according to Harris:
Jonathan Gannon on Tuesday [I] was told, hey, this guy is very smart. He understands defenses. He gets it, but can he connect with the players? And I don’t think they got that question answered in their interview process. That was the big thing for Jonathan Gannon. He was a top-two contender from this search from the very jump. Jonathan Gannon has a lot of supporters in Dallas, whether it be Brian Schottenheimer, Clayton Adams or anyone else who has worked with him over the course of his career.
Bringing him in, it was with the understanding that he was going to have a pretty damn good shot at landing this job and certainly was ahead of a name like Christian Parker or Daronte Jones, but I don’t think he got that question answered to them. If he could connect with them on a personal basis A) and then B) being able to communicate to these guys what he wants out of them.
I think, looking back on the Matt Eberflus decision and what went wrong with Matt Eberflus over the last season, that is the thing that they point to the most is that, yes, they believed in him, they believed in what he was trying to preach, but he cannot get that communicated to the players.
As it started to get further down with Jonathan Gannon, I think they realized that it would be very similar to hiring Matt Eberflus again, from that perspective.
I’m not here to bash Gannon. He isn’t Hafley on the mic, but I also don’t think that’s an important aspect of an NFL defensive coordinator’s job, either. As Daire Carragher of Pro Football Focus and Packer Report has pointed out, Gannon’s Arizona Cardinals only had 10 coverage busts last season, which was the third-fewest of any team in the league. Considering Gannon’s defense was a quarters-based system, like in his time as the Philadelphia Eagles’s defensive coordinator, that’s pretty impressive — as quarters-based defenses often take much more on-field communication than the average NFL defense. To me, that would be evidence enough to shrug off the “Is he able to communicate what he wants out of players?” critique in isolation.
Gannon doesn’t talk like the typical macho defensive coordinator you’d get sent from Central Casting. If that moves you, it moves you. Gannon did get hit with a $100,000 fine for hitting a player who fumbled the ball in 2025. That is firmly in the “Not Good And If You Ever Do It Again You’re Probably Out Of The League Forever” bucket. I will say, though, this is the first time I’ve ever actually heard anyone question whether Gannon can or can’t communicate on-field assignments to his players.
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I have two more things I want to mention here at the end. One factor for Dallas’ perspective might be that Gannon coached under Eberflus, who the Cowboys were just burnt by, with the Indianapolis Colts from 2018-2020. Maybe there’s some projecting of Eberflus onto his former protégé. Second, Gannon didn’t call plays for the Cardinals, unlike his time with the Eagles. It was actually his defensive coordinator — Nick Rallis, who Gannon brought with him from Philadelphia — who actually called plays for Arizona. Maybe the Cowboys are giving the credit for the Cardinals’ defenses not having many coverage busts to Gannon’s assistants, since he was a non-play-calling head coach. If that’s the case, though…why’d you come into the process with him as a “top-two contender” anyway?
Ultimately, Harris said, “Parker blew [the Cowboys] out of the water” with his second interview and was hired within 24 hours of that meeting. Considering that Parker began his NFL coaching career with the Packers in 2019, it’s hard to imagine that these two coordinators won’t be juxtaposed next to each other moving forward.
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