Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon apologised to Emari Demercado on Monday after his furious reaction to the running back’s costly blunder in Sunday’s 22-21 loss to the Tennessee Titans. 

Demercado had broken free in the fourth quarter and looked set to score a 72-yard touchdown, only to let the football go before crossing the goalline.

A video subsequently appeared to show Gannon ranting at Demercado as he is being consoled by left tackle Paris Johnson Jr, before making physical contact with the player’s right arm.

“I woke up this morning and didn’t feel great about it, honestly,” said Gannon.

“I just told [the team], I kind of let the moment of what happened get the better of me there. Obviously, I try to be emotionally stable and calm because my job is to solve problems during a game and lead the charge on that. It’s not really who I am, who I want to be, and I told the guys that today.

“It’s a mistake by me, and it’s just like everybody in there, everybody made some type of mistake yesterday, which culminates to why we didn’t win the game, and we can’t let it happen moving forward.”

The touchdown would have given the Cardinals a 28-6 lead with 12.40 remaining in the game, but instead the Titans went on to score on the back of Demercado’s mistake.

The Cardinals were also guilty of surrendering a comical pin-ball touchdown in which Cam Ward’s tipped pass was intercepted before being fumbled and then downed for a score in the endzone with five minutes to play.

Quarterback Kyler Murray would later label Arizona’s performance, ‘How to Lose a Game 101’.

“I just thought it [Demercado’s mistake] was a big play in the game that it needs to be executed,” Gannon said. “I’ve seen us do that before, execute those things, and we hold our hat on standard operating procedures about the ball, and I just would have liked to see it execute a little bit better there.”

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