The Arizona Cardinals have issued their head coach, Jonathan Gannon, a $100,000 fine for roughing up RB Emari Demercado on the sidelines during the loss to the winless Tennessee Titans.
With the Cardinals
up 21-6 in the second quarter with 12:51 remaining, Demercado found a hole open between LT Paris Johnson and Hjalte Froholdt and then raced untouched for what seemed like a 72-yard touchdown scamper.
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But the defender on the play, CB L’Jarius Sneed, made chase and, in the end, attempted to punch out the ball around the one-yard line. Sneed had caught up with Demercado because the running back began to slow down at the 10-yard line, and by the time he was at the five, he was in full deceleration mode even though he still had not crossed the goal line.
Sneed did not punch the ball out, but instead, Demercado let it drop out of his hands. It was ruled a touchdown with the Cardinals now up 27-6 with a pending PAT attempt.
Once Demercado crossed the goal line, the ball was loose and then tumbled out of the back of the end zone. Sneed instantly began to complain that the play should not be a score, but instead a touchback. Meanwhile, the obviously tired Demercado stood mere feet away from the stadium wall with arms up in celebration in front of hometown fans.
Sneed continued his tirade about the play not being a touchdown. The referees then took a look at the play, and in the end, it was decided that Demercado had let the ball go free just inches in front of the goal line. That nullified the six points and gave Tennessee the ball with a first down at their own 20-yard line.
At the final gun, the Titans won 22-21. The lost six points were invaluable.
Meanwhile, along the sidelines after the officials ruled that Demercado had simply dropped the ball too soon and the touchdown was taken off the board, numerous players came over to the running back to console him. One of these was offense tackle Johnson, who had his arm around Demercado as OG Will Hernandez looked on.
Gannon is seen coming over to Demercado, begins yelling at the running back, and berates him. If you have ever played organized sports, especially the game of football, this is nothing new. The severity of the word-bashing depends on the player’s mistake.
At one point, Coach Gannon bumps Demarcado’s front breast plate of his shoulder pads, screams a bit more, and then punches him, probably in the same spot. Every football player gets hit, slammed, punched, and pushed in the exact same spot in every practice and game. This breast plate is made of the same rigid plastic that the rest of the shoulder pads are made of, and then has padding underneath, so it is made to take abuse.
This means Coach Gannon did not injure Demarcado, but the act of being punched by his head coach can definitely get a message across – good or bad.
Coaches scream, yell, and cuss at players all the time. But not to this extreme. The unwritten rule in sports is that coaches do not hit players. They just don’t. That is the line. And yes, Gannon was pretty upset. He had reason to be. It is difficult to get touchdowns in a game. It takes the OC to make the right call, then the men up front must do their jobs.
On Monday, Gannon said he apologized to Demercado and the Cardinals players during a team meeting that afternoon. He told ESPN:
“I just told them, I kind of let the moment of what happened get the better of me there.”
According to the franchise, there won’t be any other discipline for Coach Gannon.
This was Demercado’s game to prove that he could be a starting running back in the NFL. He began the season as RB3. And now, here he was starting.
The play certainly had a knucklehead ending. And really, many Cardinals fans would have preferred for the franchise to cut Demercado during halftime right there on the spot. What a team wakeup call that would have been. So, for him to be yelled at and still have a job playing in the NFL just might be considered a miracle.
And at the time of the play, Arizona was up comfortably.
Coach Gannon clearly was not happy. Nobody in the stands was either. The play made the Cardinals appear to be amateurs to the game of football instead of men who are paid millions to play a child’s sport.
Instead of being 3-2-0 in the standings of the league’s toughest division, Arizona is 2-3-0 in the league’s toughest division. They have given away the last three games in which they had the contest tied or won. And that bad habit continued into this game, with yet another last-second field goal defeating them.
Simply put, Coach Gannon just lost it. What should be done is what every team does: take care of this in private. Then it is not out there in public for everyone to see. Look at this video taken. This was not from the team, but some spectator sitting in the stands who then posted it to social media. Now, it is worldwide for everyone to see that the Cardinals are inept on the field – and off.
Mistakes by players and coaches happen in every game. Did Demercado’s miscue cost them the game? It certainly was on the list of dumb occurrences that happened in this one game.
Can’t put their hands on players no matter how bad the mistake.
