Eagles Offered Jonathan Gannon More Money to Return, Per Peter King

Also, Nick Sirianni explained what he is looking for in his net defensive coordinator

Just how badly did the Eagles want to retain defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon?

Enough to offer him more money than he would have made to become the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.

That’s according to NFL veteran writer Peter King in his Football Morning in America column on Monday.

“I loved Philly,” Gannon told King. “I love (owner) Mr. (Jeffrey) Lurie. I love (GM) Howie Roseman. I love (head coach) Nick Sirianni. They came back and they were like, here’s a new offer. It’s gonna pay you more than being a head coach.

“That’s cool and I loved it there, but I wanted to be a head coach and I was excited about this because of Mr. Bidwell—Michael, as he would say – (GM) Monti Ossenfort, and QB Kyler (Murray).”

Clearly, the Eagles didn’t want to lose both coordinators, something that hadn’t happened in the NFL since 2013 when Cincinnati’s Marvin Lewis lost Jay Gruden to Washington and Mike Zimmer to Minnesota.

Also in King’s well-done piece is an attempt to explain the easy touchdowns allowed to Kadarius Toney and Skyy Moore by utilizing jet sweeps in Kansas City’s 38-35 win over the Eagles and Gannon’s defense in Super Bowl LVII.

Football Morning in America is up! 🎉🤓
In my column this week:

🦅🌵 Jonathan Gannon talks Philly Super Bowl defense and Cardinals HC job
📝 Things I didn’t write about the Super Bowl
⚖️ The NFL’s Black coaches initiative needs an overhaulhttps://t.co/SNBr1G5MWj

— Peter King (@peter_king) February 20, 2023

Say what you want about Gannon’s defense against Andy Reid and the Chiefs' coaching staff, but one game does not ruin a body of work, and Gannon had put together a solid resume during his two seasons in Philly, so it made sense for the Eagles to want to keep him around.

Given an offseason injection of more talent on the defensive side of the ball, Gannon’s unit rose to second overall in total defense compared to 10th during his rookie year as a DC.

Also, consider under Gannon:

• The pass defense went from 11 to No. 1

• Points per game rose from 18 to 8

• The red zone improved from 29 to 11

• Third-down efficiency climbed from a tie for 23 to 13.

• The only real slippage came in rush defense which dropped from 9 to a tie for 16th

So, now the Eagles need two coordinators and have already expressed interest in Vance Joseph, who had been the DC in Arizona since 2019, and Sean Desai, an assistant head coach/defensive assistant in Seattle.

Sirianni talked about the DC job last week and what he will be looking for and said he isn’t opposed to possibly altering the scheme in some ways.

“I'm naturally going to have things that I'm going to require the next defensive coordinator to do, but I also know that I'm hiring somebody to do their job to the best of their abilities, and that's why I'm hiring them.

“Again, it's all going to look a little bit different, no matter if you bring Jonathan's twin brother in, which he doesn't have - if you brought him in, it's still going to look a little different when that guy calls it as opposed to Coach Gannon.

So, there's going to be little changes, little differences. But, again, I guess my long way of answering that is I'm not opposed to changing. I'm going to do what's best for the Eagles.”

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglestoday.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.