Mike Florio ,
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After Cardinals running back Emari Demercado dropped the football inches short of capping a 72-yard run with a score, TV cameras captured images of coach Jonathan Gannon berating Demercado . During the exchange, Gannon seemed to initiate contact with Demercado.
On Monday, Gannon was asked about the exchange.
“I didn’t see the video,” Gannon told reporters, “but, yeah, I actually — I woke up this morning and didn’t feel great about it, honestly. And so in a team meeting, I addressed it. I apologized to Emari, I apologized to the team. And I just told him I kind of let the moment of what happened get the better of me there.
“Obviously, like, I I try to be emotionally stable and calm, because my job is to solve problems . . . during a game — and kind of lead the charge on that. So it’s not really who I am, who I want to be, and I told the guys that today. So it’s a mistake by me, and it’s just like everybody in there. Everybody made some type of mistake yesterday, which is, you know, culminates to why we didn’t win the game. And we can’t let it happen and move forward.”
Demercado’s mistake kept the Cardinals from taking a 28-6 lead in the fourth quarter. And it was the most avoidable miscue, especially after Colts receiver Adonai Mitchell made a similar mistake a week earlier.
It was for Gannon and his coaching staff to see the Mitchell play and to remind all players to never do that. The fact that Demercado did it seven days later was a failure by Demercado.
And it was a failure by Gannon.
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