After retiring from football before the 2005 season, Rich Gannon began a career in sports broadcasting. Currently, Gannon is an analyst for NFL on CBS and co-hosts the radio program The Sirius Blitz on Sirius XM NFL Radio. In the NFL season opening week, Rich Gannon, paired with Marv Albert on CBS, will call the Oakland Raiders at the Indianapolis Colts.
The Raiders are the very team with which Rich Gannon found his greatest success as a quarterback, making four straight Pro Bowls and reaching a Super Bowl. However, the Minnesota Vikings are the team with which Gannon broke into the league, so I wanted to get his assessment of the Vikes, and the NFC North during my exclusive time with him at NFL CBS Media Day.
note: this is re-published from 2013
“The whole talk this offseason has been about Christian Ponder. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t get asked about Ponder,” Gannon said.
“They have the greatest running back in football, a Pro Bowl fullback, an offensive line that played together every game last year. They got him some help at wide receiver with Patterson and Jennings, and we’re going to find out whether or not Christian can take the next stop up in year three,” the 2002 NFL MVP said.
“They’ll be good enough defensively, you look at the division how competitive it is, we know about the other three quarterbacks in that division.”
Rich Gannon also opined on what the Detroit Lions bring to the NFC North race:
“Jim Schwartz had a good team a couple years ago, last year you could almost see it coming with all the issues they had in the offseason. But Matthew Stafford has thrown for over 10,000 yards the last two years, they’re going to be better on defense, Suh and Fairley are healthy. I think you could see three teams winning nine or more games in that division,” he said.
Rich Gannon on Jay Cutler and the Bears:
“I went and worked with Jay for a day this offseason, Marc Trestman and I were together a couple different places, most notably in Oakland. Jay, to me, it’s all about trusting. Trust in the system, the players around him, trust the coaching staff and if he can do that I think he’ll be successful,” Gannon said.
“But, he’s got to work through some demons, he’s had some bad experiences as a quarterback and because of those experiences I don’t think he’s trusted the guys he’s worked with,” Rich Gannon added.
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports and Yahoo! He’s been a guest on news talk shows all across the world. He’s also a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Banks has been featured in numerous media outlets including NFL.com, Forbes, Bleacher Report, Deadspin, ESPN, NBC, CBS, the History Channel and more. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)