Jonathan Gannon's future with Cardinals enters the forefront as dismal season nears end

A dreadful season for the Arizona Cardinals is mercifully nearing its end.

Now one question hovers over the franchise: Will coach Jonathan Gannon keep his job and be back for a fourth season?

Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill is a relatively quiet but constant presence around the team, and he has given little clue about what he wants to do. Arizona started the season 2-0 and had hopes of returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2021, but has since dropped 13 of 14 in a brutal freefall.

In the aftermath of the latest debacle — a 37-14 beatdown at the hands of the Cincinnati Bengals — Gannon was asked why he should be the team's leader moving forward. The 42-year-old is confident he'll return.

“I think their effort, energy and enthusiasm are there," Gannon said. "I think they’re educated. They have belief, but we have to coach and play better. There’s no doubt.”

Here's the case for — and against — keeping Gannon:

— On the positive side, Gannon's first two seasons were encouraging as the team appeared on an upward trajectory. The Cardinals finished 4-13 in 2023 during what was clearly a rebuilding season and then improved to 8-9 last year, hanging in the playoff race until the final few weeks. This year has obviously been difficult, but Gannon still appears to have the support of the locker room.

It's also true that the team has had a brutal run of injuries. The Cardinals went into the Bengals game with 23 players on injured reserve or the non-football injury list, which was the most in the NFL. Miami was second with 18.

— As for the negatives, there are plenty. The Cardinals have had multiple embarrassing moments and performances during this year's freefall, which are quickly erasing good memories from the first two seasons.

Running back Emari Demercado dropped the football just short of a touchdown while celebrating too early in Week 5 against the Titans, which started a stunning collapse that saw a 21-9 lead turn into a 22-21 defeat. Making matters worse, Gannon was caught on camera angrily confronting Demercado, appearing to bump the running back as he swiped his arm downward.

The Cardinals fined the coach $100,000 for his actions.

Arizona was also called for a franchise-record 17 penalties in a 41-22 loss to the 49ers in Week 11. The Cardinals are 0-5 against NFC West opponents this season, losing the last three by a combined 71 points. If they lose the regular-season finale against the Rams on Sunday, they'll finish with more losses than the rest of the three NFC West teams combined.

Trey McBride set the NFL record for receptions in a season for a tight end. He has 119 catches, eclipsing the previous record of 116 set by Zach Ertz in 2018.

“I’m proud of him," Gannon said. “He shows up to work every day and battles. He’s one of the best players out there. That’s really cool. I’m down about the team and I know he’s down about the team, but I don’t want to overlook that.”

The Bengals converted on 10 of 15 third-down attempts, shredding the Cardinals defense during the game's most important moments. Arizona is giving up 35 points per game during its eight-game losing streak.

WR Michael Wilson. He continued his breakout season with five catches for 89 yards and a TD.

The 25-year-old out of Stanford had 907 yards receiving this season and given his current trajectory, he has a decent shot at hitting 1,000 yards against the Rams in the finale.

WR Marvin Harrison Jr. It has been a lost season for the second-year receiver, who left Sunday's game early with a foot injury after being targeted just one time.

Harrison has had good moments in his first two seasons, but has not been the game-changing option the Cardinals hoped for when they took him with the No. 4 overall pick in 2024. He has 41 catches for 608 yards and four TDs this season, missing time because of injuries and surgery for an appendectomy.

The Cardinals hope S Budda Baker (concussion/thumb) can return for the finale. Harrison's season might be done after the latest problems with his foot.

20 — Gannon's record as Arizona's coach has fallen to 15-35 in three seasons — 20 games under .500.

The Cardinals wrap up the season at the Rams on Sunday.

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Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Michael Wilson, right, celebrates with teammates after scoring a touchdown during the first half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Arizona Cardinals tight end Trey McBride (85) catches a touchdown pass in the endzone during the second half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon watches from the sideline during the first half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon leaves the field after an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.

“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”

Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.

Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world's premier public health agency.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.

As this was playing out, Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”

The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”

Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”

The CDC's acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.

The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.

But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.

In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China.

The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.

Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC's lack of trying.

“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency's work now is delayed and subdued.

Instead of working with nearly all of the world's nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.

That's not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can't possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)