by In the latest edition of David Tepper has no idea what he’s doing, the Panthers owner fired coach Frank Reich on Monday.
This one is a marvel. Critics are already calling it Tepper’s best work since earlier this month, when he fired Charlotte FC coach Christian Lattanzio despite the team making the MLS playoffs.
For those keeping score, Tepper has owned the Panthers and Charlotte FC for a combined seven seasons. In that time, he has had five full-time coaches and now three interim ones. When he fills his two vacancies in the coming months, that number will increase to 10 over eight seasons. Even Daniel Snyder is starting to think: What is this guy doing?
Sir Alex Ferguson, one of the greatest football managers of all time, liked to offer advice to up-and-coming managers: “Choose the owner, not the club.” At this point, who would choose Tepper?
Reich’s firing marks the second straight year the Panthers have fired an expensive coach during the season. Last October, Tepper fired Matt Rhule in the third year of a fully guaranteed seven-year contract worth $62 million. Reich’s reign lasted 11 games, the shortest stint as a head coach in the NFL since 1978. He was hired to a four-year contract in January.
Related: Chaotic Panthers fire head coach Frank Reich less than a year into his tenure
Carolina is now 1-10, with the worst record in the league. They would be sitting in pole position for the first overall pick in the draft, had they not dealt their pick to the Chicago Bears last season in Tepper’s latest effort to acquire a shiny toy.
Reich is far from innocent. A 1-10 record in a coach’s first season – or any season – is depressing. Reich was hired to boost the Panthers’ ailing offense and to restore a sense of professionalism to the franchise after Rhule’s amateurish performance. Reich was a known commodity, the safe pair of hands, a coach with experience as a Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles. He also posted a 40-33-1 record as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, despite having revolving doors at quarterback.
It should have been news to both parties. Reich, a smart offensive coach, would (finally) be paired with a promising young quarterback. The Panthers would stop playing rookies or table-pounders and turn the team over to someone who knew what they were doing.
But Reich failed to build a cohesive offense around the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft, quarterback Bryce Young. His All-Star supporting cast, which included potential head coaches Ejiro Evero, Thomas Brown and Duce Staley, who was also fired Monday, struggled to get much out of a weak roster. A defense that ranked in the Top 10 in EPA/play for much of last season has fallen to 29th this year. The offensive line cannot block. Most concerning of all: Young has shown few signs of becoming a franchise quarterback.
Reich’s job was to find answers to those problems, and he failed. But the Panthers’ problems are systemic; They were never going to be fixed in 11 games. Was it the coach who decided to trade Christian McCaffrey or DJ Moore last year? Did Reich opt to shell out a bunch of draft picks (plus Moore) to move up and draft a quarterback, rather than address pressing needs in the trenches? Was it the coach who failed to recruit, sign or acquire a competent offensive line or anything resembling a receiving corps?
Giving up McCaffrey and Moore last year was part of a long-term play. After trying to win from the middle, retooling as he went, Tepper and his Panthers were willing to take the short-term pain to raise the ceiling in the long term. They would take a game to the roster, reset their salary sheet, splurge on a VIP coaching staff and land a potential franchise quarterback in the draft. But the hyperactive owner overlooked a key detail: Reconstructions take time.
Burning a list to the ground means you have to crawl through the ashes until you can start thinking about titles. The Texans spent two years floundering in the post-Deshaun Watson wasteland before emerging with CJ Stroud, Will Anderson, Tank Dell and DeMeco Ryans. The Lions went 3-13-1 in Dan Campbell’s first season, with the worst point differential in the league.
The Lions are now atop the NFC North, ready to end a 30-year division title drought. And the Texans are the star of the league, with a rookie quarterback playing at an MVP level. But Houston didn’t just draft Stroud and catch fire. They traded for Laremy Tunsil, one of the best left tackles in the game, and guard Shaq Mason, a two-time Super Bowl champion with New England. They signed offensive linemen George Fant and Michael Deiter in free agency. They drafted lineman Tytus Howard with a first-round pick in 2019. Surrounding the rookie fireworks on the perimeter, they added veterans Dalton Schultz, Devin Singletary and Robert Woods, players who could guide the young pups through hard work. of the training ground and the traps. of the regular season. And they drafted wide receiver Nico Collins in 2021. Yes, Stroud is the player who makes everything sing, but the foundation was solid.
The Texans planned to field a winning team; Tepper likes to win the press conference. It hasn’t come to anything. Since he took over ownership, the Panthers are 30-63 and have had six straight losing seasons.
At every turn, when things go wrong, Tepper’s response is simple: More Tepper!
The problem with previous head coaching hires, Tepper said, was that he He wasn’t involved enough. “I’m saying I could have run a better process last time,” Tepper said at Reich’s introductory news conference. “I do believe that. I think we were very thorough this time. “I was in all the interviews.” Oops.
Landing Reich was, initially, a step in the right direction. But the owner couldn’t stay away. He waded into the draft evaluation process, betting on Young ahead of Stroud or Anthony Richardson. He joined film room sessions with the staff, critiquing plays. According to Reich, they were not “fun meetings.” Tepper put another draft pick on the table before the recent trade deadline, encouraging general manager Scott Fritter to acquire a wide receiver, such as DJ Moore. When those microwave meals fell short, Tepper did what he does best: He fired someone; Buñuelo’s seat is probably pretty warm today too.
They say genius thrives in disorder, or something like that. But that presupposes that the person has some idea of what he is doing or where he is trying to go. Not Tepper.
Who will take over for the Panthers in the future? Will Tepper return to Steve Wilks after leaving the Niners’ DC when he was the Panthers’ interim head coach last season? Would Kellen Moore of the Chargers or Brian Johnson of Philadelphia be willing to bet their burgeoning careers on an owner who has fired two in-season coaches in consecutive years? Reich said Monday that, despite his firing, “he has no hard feelings and my personal relationship with [Tepper] It was actually the highlight of this short time.” Note that Reich says nothing about what their professional relationship was like.
Someone will take Tepper’s call. It pays well and often pays you not to work: ESPN reports that Reich will earn another $25 million from the Panthers. And there are only 32 head coaching jobs in the NFL. Any clear-headed candidate, however, will look elsewhere, or do what Ben Johnson, Detroit’s standout offensive coordinator, did last season when he rejected Tepper’s advances to stay with the Lions for one more year.
Johnson instinctively knew what Ferguson had said for decades: You choose the owner, not the franchise. And no coach should choose Tepper, not now, not tomorrow, not ever.
