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Frank Reich’s had plenty of moments to reflect over the past six months on just where this tornado of a year has dropped him. One came a little over a week ago on his family text string, from one of his three daughters. It was a message sent to everyone in the group.
Can you believe that we’re here, together?
Reich played in Charlotte. He and his wife settled in Charlotte. His daughters spent their formative years in Charlotte, and, as adults, found their way back to the Carolinas. So, no, how all of this has played out—with Reich back as Panthers head coach, after one of the most difficult seasons of his professional career—is not lost on the 61-year-old. And, yes, he knows, as the Panthers start in Spartanburg, S.C., on Wednesday, more memories will rattle free.
He also knows what becomes of those, when he smells the fresh-cut grass, feels the stifling South Carolina humidity and looks over to see his former head coach now serving as a senior assistant on his staff, is up to him.
“Yes, but I’m keeping that to myself and to Dom Capers,” he affirmed Friday, after checking into his quarters at Wofford College, the place he camped at as a player. “Because nobody else cares. And I really … O.K., it’s surreal. But I’m not a highly sentimental guy. I want to be loyal and all those things, but I’m not highly sentimental. I’m driven to keep getting better. So what I experienced and did in the past, I really don’t spend too much time on that.
“I’m more interested in what’s about to happen. So I’m sure Dom Capers and I will be standing out there the first time on the field in a couple days, and we’ll look at each other and say, Can you believe this? And we’ll have that moment and it’ll be five or 10 seconds and then it’s over.”
Now, don’t get the message twisted. Reich’s gratitude for being where he is, and where he’ll be this week, was apparent and overflowing in the hour over which he and I spoke the other night—and you’ll see that in his own words.
But he’s also got a big job in front of him with the Panthers, a team that now has the fourth-longest playoff drought (five years) in the NFL. It’s a job he plans on doing better than he did over the last five years in Indianapolis, because even at 61, Reich’s still learning, and growing, and his fire for that job is still burning bright. And he wouldn’t want anyone to think his motivation now lies in some sort of sentimentality rather than there.
Still, he’ll acknowledge the obvious. It is pretty cool that this is where he gets to do it.
Griffin Zetterberg/USA TODAY Sports
Camp is here, and we’re ready to roll. On the site today, we’ve got you covered to kick off the NFL summer with …
• A look at the week that new Commanders owner Josh Harris just had.
• An analysis of where the running back market is, and what backs can do.
• More on new Titan DeAndre Hopkins in the Takeaways.
But we’re starting with the Panthers, and Reich’s second life as an NFL head coach.
While Reich prides himself on not harboring bitterness, or resenting others, the weeks after his November firing weren’t easy for the former Colts coach. He wanted to keep up with the league and his old players and coaches, but couldn’t bear to watch many games. And so that line he used in reference to the sentimentality of returning to Carolina—and then it’s over—certainly applies here.
Conversely, where it wasn’t over, and still isn’t, is in what Reich is trying to take from it. There were lessons to learn, for sure, and he was going to do his best to dig those out from the rubble. That meant, in the place of watching games, or lamenting his fate, Reich would pull on relationships built over nearly four decades in pro football to try to troubleshoot his program and prepare for his next shot, should it come.
Hall of Fame GM Bill Polian drafted Reich in Buffalo, signed him in Carolina and gave him his coaching start in Indianapolis, and Reich leaned on Polian a bunch. He also connected and dived into football and philosophy with old staffmates Doug Pederson and Nick Sirianni, and used two guys he hired, and guys he used to work for, in Capers and Jim Caldwell, as resources.
He even touched base with Colts players who were there for his firing, because he felt like if he was going to evaluate himself, “it had to be the proverbial 360 evaluation,” one that’d give him the best chance not so much to see everything, but more so not miss anything.
“People want to try to make it like there was one thing,” Reich says. “There wasn’t just one thing. It’s just little nuggets here and there, as we like to say. And I’ve used this illustration with players, it’s like with apps—you get version 1.0 and then you go to version 2.0. And in version 2.0, there’s some upgrades. And you’ve debugged a couple things. So I’d like to think this is version 2.0, and it’s a better version.
“Because we’ve got some programmers and debugged some things, and made some upgrades and so now we get version 2.0—not just of me, but of the program.”
That led me to ask what a Colts player from 2022 would think if he were dropped into Panthers training camp this week. The answer? It relates right back to what Reich said: This isn’t New Frank so much as it is Frank 2.0.
And where Frank 2.0 really came to life was in all those conversations, with the executives and the coaches and the players with whom Reich was close. Because, in his words, “I’m a handwritten note guy.” Reich spent the winter filling a spiral notebook with all the wisdom he could gather. He then started a new notebook once the players arrived in April, and has that one filed away, with another one now starting for training camp.
In those, there’s a lot of information, some big picture, some smaller detail. That’s why the changes seen by the imaginary player I brought up to Reich would be more in the finite points of camp, and practice, and film, than anything central to who the coach is.
“I’m not going to dramatically change who I am,” he says. “All of a sudden, I’m not going to come out and start dropping f-bombs and start yelling and screaming. I’m going to be true to who I am; I’m going to continue to learn and grow. As far as training camp looking different, there’s things that are different in the schedule. But that’s for a variety of reasons. It’s not just because I thought what we did was bad. I mean, we’re in Spartanburg; it’s really hot here. So we’re practicing earlier in the morning.
“You have to start from, not scratch, but use the experience of past years, from last year, use all the analytics and all the sport science—Well, how many days off? And how hard are we going to go? What’s a hard practice going to look like? And there’s slight tweaks to that.”
More, to be sure, will come from his staff.
Panthers offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, hired from Sean McVay’s Rams staff, has never worked with Reich before. Neither has defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, plucked from the Broncos, and the subject of a bidding war in January. And rather than bring in his own kicking-game guy, Reich retained special teams coordinator Chris Tabor from former Panthers coach Matt Rhule’s staff.
While Reich did backstop those areas with some familiar faces—offensive passing-game coordinator Parks Frazier, senior defensive assistant Capers and assistant special teams coach Devin Fitzsimmons have all worked with Reich before—the overall idea here was to bolster the 2.0 version of Reich’s program with an infusion of new ideas.
That sort of thing, what he calls “diversity of thought,” is something Reich has always sought. It’s just that this time around, the concept is visible at every level of the staff.
“This is not dramatically new as far as morphing or melding systems together,” Reich says. “Every time I’ve gone somewhere, we’ve done that. I was the offensive coordinator in San Diego and went to Philadelphia, and Doug Pederson and I melded together an offense. Doug was the head coach, he had his offense and slowly he allowed me to integrate some of the stuff that we did in San Diego, and we did it together.
“And then I went to Indianapolis, and I brought in Sirianni. Sirianni and I were pretty much the same from when we were together in San Diego, but there had been a couple years we had been apart, and so he picked up some new things, I picked up some new things, and then we melded that together. And we rechanged how we called things, we systematized things differently. Now this is getting someone like Thomas, who’s brilliant, from the Sean McVay system, and now let’s integrate that and adapt it to how it fits into the new system.”
Which is where, at 61 years old, Reich can find his edge.
And it’s not just with his offensive staff. He spent the last five years coaching, day-to-day in practice, against Matt Eberflus’s Tampa 2 adaptation, then Gus Bradley’s version of Seattle’s Cover 3 defense. Now, in Evero, he’ll have a counterpart every day running a defense derived from Vic Fangio’s system, but also with influence from Wade Phillips and Raheem Morris, which, as Reich sees it, will only make his system and his offensive staff better.
Beyond just that, as he sees it, it should make the head coach better, too—even if it doesn’t lead to some sort of change that the fan in section 121 can spot through a pair of binoculars.
“Absolutely, it’s made me a better coach,” he says. “It’s the healthy tension of being strong and staying central on your core convictions, but being open-minded and willing to grow and learn. And one thing I know and I believe I can never get accused of, is that hey, this isn’t a guy who’s 61 years old, who’s just stuck in the old ways. That’s never been who I am. The age thing is nothing. I always want to be at the cutting edge of team philosophy, leadership, offensive philosophy.
“It’s always been a continual quest to stay on the cutting edge of that. So that’s regardless of age. And I think that’s what bringing different people to the table; it keeps it fresh.”
And yes, it’s a lot of new people for Reich to learn from, and about.
Not the least of which is his new quarterback.
Jim Dedmon/USA TODAY Sports
A lot of times when coaches decide not to give first-round quarterbacks first-team reps from the jump, it’s in an effort to make them earn their way up the depth chart.
But that really wasn’t it with Bryce Young, back in May, when Reich and his staff started OTAs with Andy Dalton in the huddle with the starters. At that point, it was a nod to the work the rest of the team had done leading up to the arrival of the rookie class—not wanting to have to stop that progress to accommodate the development of a single player.
At the same time, that decision would be baked into a plan that Reich, Brown, Caldwell, Frazier and QBs coach Josh McCown had hatched for Young, using the early parts of OTAs to get him up to speed, before getting him in there with the first team organically, when he was caught up, a plan that would also allow for Young to get to see Dalton, a 13-year veteran, operate the offense.
As part of that plan, a goal was set to elevate Young for the last two weeks of the spring.
“He’s going into training camp as the No. 1 quarterback; we made that transition with about two weeks to go into OTAs,” Reich says. “We didn’t make any big deal of it; we didn’t hold any big press conference. We just did it. That was always the plan. … We’d started talking about, O.K., Andy’s going to take first-team reps. Let’s just assume that everything goes the way we think it’s going to go—when’s the best time to make that transition? And that’s kind of what we had determined. And then things went the way we thought they would go.
“We were willing to adapt and adjust, if needed, but we didn’t need to.”
That’s because Young, for the most part, has come as advertised, and a lot of that has been a result of things Reich and his staff knew about the 2021 Heisman winner.
Reich addressed the personnel staff after the team traded for the first pick and outlined his five criteria for a quarterback, cultivated after being around, and coaching, guys like Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers and Andrew Luck, and also going through five seasons in Indy with five different starting quarterbacks. Those five criteria: toughness, footwork and finish, accuracy, playmaking ability and the x-factor (“the quarterback is a multiplier”). And Young brought those things to Charlotte, at least in a spring setting, as Carolina figured he would.
But there were also a few things Reich and his staff didn’t know, at least for sure, and one was how Young’s stature would figure into his ability to see the field. There wasn’t any lack of vision on tape. It was just that, until Reich could stand behind Young on the practice field, and know what he was seeing, and see how he saw it, it was hard to be totally certain.
He is now.
“I’m only one person, but we wouldn’t have drafted him if we had major concerns about that,” Reich says. “And we didn’t. But it’s one thing to say, Oh no, we’re good, you can see it on film. He sees the field real easy. People can say what they want about 5'10"-and-change, but the guy’s done it his whole life. We’ve seen that on film so we’re going to believe the tape. So I believed the tape. But now I’ve seen it in person.
“I’ve been around football enough to know that I do think that there are some shorter guys that do have a problem seeing. But maybe it’s not that they’re shorter, maybe it’s because they just can’t see. I don’t know. All I know is standing behind Bryce, I never felt like he didn’t see that one because the offensive lineman was in his way. That just never happened.”
The other thing that didn’t happen—Reich never had to prod Young to be a leader. “I don’t have to encourage him,” the coach says, “because he’s a natural leader. He’s been a leader his whole life.” This, then, is just a new stage for the 21-year-old to show that on.
Now, of course that doesn’t mean there won’t be bumps. It also doesn’t mean that, from Reich’s view, a talented offensive line, Brian Burns, Jeremy Chinn, Jaycee Horn or whoever else should need to wait on the quarterback to develop to start winning. It’s that the staff’s decision to install Young now is an affirmation that they see now what they did in late April, and that’s a kid ready to handle all that.
“Patrick Mahomes sat on the bench his rookie year. Peyton Manning was 3–13. Troy Aikman was 1–15,” Reich says. “The list goes on and on. So this is a two- to four-year project. It’s a two- to four-year project with every sense of urgency to win every game and make the most of every day. Those things can both be true. Hey, they don’t really care about winning now. … No, that’s garbage. We’re fighting and scratching to win every game, to win our division, to win playoff games. But it’s a two- to four year project.”
And that project is now full-steam ahead.
“Bryce is our starter,” Reich continues. “We’re going forward; this is how we’re rolling.”
Reich’s Panthers are rolling now, at least in the context of where we are in the calendar.
Inside those bird-dogged notebooks are the organs of Reich’s professional development, which have been built into the bones of a program he believes in. His coaching staff, diverse in every way, has only enhanced that. He has a roster he really likes and stability at quarterback he could never find in Indianapolis after Andrew Luck retired. He can’t wait for the pads to go on in a few days and for the real football to start.
“That’s what I’ve loved about this game from the time when I was a little kid,” he says.
So how does his, well, untraditional dismissal from Indy eight months ago factor into all of this? He swears it doesn’t. All those feelings and emotions have been processed.
“You can’t help but feel upset about certain things. And I didn’t want to feel that way; I wanted to feel thankful and appreciative for the opportunity and for the experience,” Reich says. “Because that’s really how I feel. I’ve been down the block far enough to know, listen, I know I’m emotional right now. I know I’m upset. But I also know this—thank you, Mr. [Jim] Irsay, for the opportunity. Thank you to the guys on that team and the coaches on that team.
“What a great experience. There was a lot of winning football games, there was a lot of great experiences there, and maybe we didn’t make it as far down the road as we wanted a couple times, but we did a lot of great things. I’ll never forget those things.”
That’s why he says he never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him. In time, in fact, in leaning on his faith, Reich came to see the experience a different way.
Maybe, he thought, this really was part of something bigger. At the very least, he could afford to see it that way, and he didn’t have to look much further than across the living room to gain that sort of perspective on what had happened to him. His wife of 37 years, after all, had followed him all over the country, both as a player and as a coach, as he chased his dream, and now one of these moves was working out just about perfectly for her.
“What if he was blessing her and not me?” Reich says. “And what if to bless her, I had to get fired? … I would tell you that I believe that part of me getting fired was to be a blessing for our family. That we’re both 61, we’ve grinded in this profession for a lot of years, we have grandkids and in some ways, I just feel like this is a blessing.”
In other words, from Frank himself—don’t shed any tears for Frank.
“I always thought it was amazing that I played 14 years and never got cut,” Reich says. “That was a shock, that in 14 years as a player, I never got cut. I never thought I could get through a coaching career without getting let go. That wasn’t going to happen. So you move on. And you move on as an individual, you move on as a family and that’s what people do. Not just me, not just in football, that’s what people do in life.
“So we’re going to be thankful for this opportunity to be together as a family. But I’m also incredibly grateful to the Teppers for the opportunity to bring version 2.0, for another great shot to finish a long career in the NFL. Because this will likely be it. I’m 61, still got plenty of fire and juice left, gonna pour every ounce of it into this. We’re home with our family. We’re with a team and an organization we love. Just … let’s let it rip.”
Which is to say, as great as his memories are of the place he’s back in, now it’s time to create some new ones.
