Jonathan Gannon answered questions on the tampering incident for the first time today since he didn’t talk to the media during the draft:

How Eagles fans will feel about his answer will mostly depend on how you feel about Gannon because we don’t have much to interpret besides the details in Marcus Hayes’ article and what Gannon is saying today. It’s not even a he said/he said situation because the Eagles haven’t acknowledged anything about the incident other than Howie Roseman confirming the compensation was negotiated at the ownership level:

Which Hayes did report in his article. So point for him after I called his sources questionable.

Personally I don’t think there is anything you can find that would point to Gannon being distracted. A lot happened in that Super Bowl that wasn’t solely on his shoulders. The punt coverage was poor, the holding call on James Bradberry, the Quez Watkins drop that puts them inside the 10 to potentially go up 10, Hurt’s fumble in the first half, and Nick Sirianni deciding to kick a field goal on 4th down.

Instead what I think happened is Gannon got loose lips around the organization and spilled the beans to someone on the Eagles staff and they told Howie and Co. who kept it on the hush until they could use it to their benefit. If that’s the case why wouldn’t you want to get compensation for losing your DC? The Cardinals GM isn’t the first person to illegally tamper with a potential head coach. I mean DeMeco Ryans was named the Texans coach two days after the NFC Championship game. The only problem is he got caught and Howie made him pay.