The Arizona Cardinals got a huge wake-up call in February when an anonymous survey showed players were not happy with team facilities and amenities.
New head coach Jonathan Gannon said this week that the team has made”some big-time changes already” this offseason.
However, he denied the survey’s results led to any changes.
In February, the NFLPA released the results of a survey of 1,300 of its players who were asked to grade their team on eight factors, including everything from food and travel amenities to training staff, locker room, weight room and more.
The Cardinals ranked second-to-last among the 32 NFL teams on their report card, with F or even F- in five of the eight categories.
Gannon told azcardinals.com he was not familiar with the survey results, but said team owner Michael Bidwill has already overseen many changes this offseason.
“I’m not going to get too much into it, but food, weight room, facilities, contracts, Michael has been fantastic,” Gannon said (via the team’s website). “He came in my office the other day saying he wanted technology (discussed) and graded. We had a couple meetings with the heads of departments and we said ‘we need this this and this, we don’t need this,’ and he’s pulled the trigger on all of it.”
In another big change, the Cardinals have moved on from longtime head athletic trainer Tom Reed.
“Tom has been awesome, he’s done a great job here for the last 15 or so years, but we just felt a change was necessary there,” Gannon said.
Yet Gannon denied that Reed’s departure, or any changes, resulted from the survey.
“No. No. I still haven’t read the report card so no,” Gannon said. “No decision that I make is going to be predicated on a report card or a media story or a narrative out there. I don’t do business like that. We’ll evaluate things how we want to evaluate things and make changes from there.”
Instead, Gannon said Bidwill told him he “wanted a fresh set of eyes on everything” when he arrived, and that’s what Gannon and new general manager Monti Ossenfort have done in their evaluation.
To that end, Gannon has been getting feedback from players.
“All I can speak to is talking to the players and talking to Michael and Monti, of what we wanted to do to improve our operation standpoint, and we have done that,” Gannon said.
