Panthers owner David Tepper’s signing Matt Rhule to a seven-year, $63 million deal in 2020 was no small gesture. For one, it angered fellow members of the NFL owners’ club, raising the entry price for unproven talent beyond the standard four-year deals they were accustomed to. But, more significantly, it was a gamble on the idea that a roster in need of rebuilding could be rebuilt by someone whose best efforts in that regard came in the NCAA landscape, where talent equity and acquisition are more a game of effort and salesmanship.
The Panthers fired Rhule on Sunday less than three full years into that seven-year contract, and, in many ways, Rhule has changed the coaching landscape irreversibly because of those same considerations Tepper weighed at the time. As we speak, most coaching salaries for first-time head coaches in the NFL have shrunken back to the industry standard (four-year deals worth roughly $4 million per season, give or take), according to sources familiar with the process. And college coaches are once again nonstarters for many considering potential NFL head coaching candidates, according to those same folks. While Urban Meyer had more to do with this than Rhule, the fact that Rhule struggled to transfer the kind of culture-building mechanisms that became synonymous with his rise in college has become reason enough for many to skip the NCAA pool for at least a few more years.
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These are macro observations, of course. As someone who deals with vast sums of wealth, Tepper has to consider them along with the microeconomic impact of what Rhule’s tenure brought to the Panthers individually. The latter is far less interesting but far more concerning: the stuff of existential dread. At the end of the day, Rhule was meant to rebuild the Panthers, secure a franchise quarterback and get them to a place of sustainable health. Instead, the franchise squandered draft capital in search of a QB, whiffed on the biggest veterans on the market and buried themselves even deeper in the woods. There is no Matt Stafford or Russell Wilson. There isn’t even a Teddy Bridgewater or Sam Darnold after 2022.
This may end up being the most disappointing part of the past two-plus years in Carolina, spent piling up 11 wins and 27 losses. With other franchises that were tailspinning over this span, at least there was a springboard once the talent they acquired was met with quality coaching that could elevate the talent. Take the Giants, for example. Saquon Barkley, Daniel Jones, Andrew Thomas, Leonard Williams, Dexter Lawrence and the like are all talented players who were just waiting for the right system. With Rhule in particular, his ability to turn around an obscure outpost in the football landscape, such as Temple, always left us with the idea that he’d figure out a way to make it work with the Panthers. The flailing to acquire Darnold or Baker Mayfield didn’t seem as desperate at the time. Until now.
The Panthers’ most recognizable star, Christian McCaffrey, will enter next season at age 27. It will be more constructive for us to debate his future as potential trade fodder than as an eventual piece of the Panthers’ future. It’s hard to look at this roster and think that the losing under Rhule at least helped them formulate the basis of a team that could turn around any time soon.
They will almost certainly be in the running for a high first-round 1 pick, which they’ll likely use to consider Bryce Young, Will Levis or C.J. Stroud. A quarterback and a new coach will have to navigate a depleted roster situation alongside the pressures of rebuilding on the fly. This will be as much a challenge to Tepper as an owner as it will be to the new coach and quarterback, who will feel the owner’s presence over their shoulders.
Which brings us back to the macroeconomics of all this. Where will Tepper turn now that he has (hopefully) digested the incident report on his first major NFL hire? The first one was such a magnanimous attempt at change that it literally altered the way the league has operated. The Panthers became a cautionary tale.
Will Tepper turn to a more conventional approach with his next hire? Will he pair the new quarterback with a coach off the Sean McVay tree? Will he venture into even more conservative waters like Shad Khan in Jacksonville and Jerry Jones in Dallas have done, and hire a coach who already has Super Bowl credentials?
Or, will Tepper realize that the remnants of the roster are such that only another outlier can solve the problem in a timeframe consistent with his liking? It was this thought process in the first place that likely pinned the Panthers in the NFL’s basement for the foreseeable future. It’s not likely to be their way out.
