Frank Reich never had a chance with the Carolina Panthers.
Carolina hired the deposed former Indianapolis Colts head coach to oversee a rebuild. Then the franchise fired him before he could even get through a full season. It was the kind of knee-jerk reaction only seen in true disasters, last seen with Urban Meyer and the Jacksonville Jaguars and extremely rare before that.
But Reich wasn’t a disaster. He didn’t alienate players. He wasn’t caught on camera embarrassing himself and the team on social media. He merely guided a bad team to a bad record while aligning meager chess pieces for a run in 2024.
And that got him fired, because that’s who the Panthers are under owner David Tepper. A poorly run franchise where long-term success is asked to grow in the barren backyard of a short-sighted hothead.
Tepper has run the franchise for fewer than five seasons. He’s burned through five head coaches in that stretch — three full-time hires in Reich, Ron Rivera and Matt Rhule and two interim leaders in Perry Fewell and Steve Wilks. By the time the 2023 regular season comes to a close, promoted special teams coach Chris Tabor will almost certainly make it six deposed coaches in five years.
This, understandably, has built Tepper’s reputation as a meddler. The hedge fund manager built an empire on bold moves and distressed stocks, turning junk into prosperity along the way. His first half-decade on the job has proven this strategy doesn’t translate to the NFL on a 1:1 basis.
He’s reportedly aggressive behind the scenes, emerging not only as the ax that cuts off underwhelming coaches but the decision-maker who hamstrings those coaches by overruling personnel decisions. Like, you know, trading an All-Pro caliber wide receiver, two first-round draft picks and two second-round picks for the opportunity to draft Bryce Young over Rookie of the Year front runner CJ Stroud against the advice of his own doomed coaches.
This is troubling to say the least.. pic.twitter.com/Pxx3f592ru
— Michael Rimmer (@avl_mike) October 9, 2023
Firing Reich, who admittedly struggled while flip-flopping between playcalling and bigger picture roles for a 1-10 team, is a deflection. It’s cover to suggest Young was the right call all along and it was the system that failed him (it was, at least partially, but it’s also the system Tepper and the Panthers put in place). A chance for Tepper to double down on his distressed asset and turn it into a blue chip stock.
This does the Panthers zero favors in the long run. It puts massive pressure on the next guy up to glean production from a young quarterback who has struggled behind a depleted roster. That new hire will step into an offseason with tons of holes to fill, limited salary cap space (especially with a massive Brian Burns contract extension looming) and no first-round draft pick (which might be the first overall pick the way things are going).
That means the next hire will almost certainly be someone with a background developing quarterback talent … which is what Reich was. Reich was chased out of Indianapolis, in part, for being too good for a franchise in need of a reset (that he was replaced by Jeff Saturday, a man with no coaching experience, merely cemented this theory).
In his time there, he made Andrew Luck 2018’s comeback player of the year and engineered top-10 scoring offenses behind a 39-year-old Philip Rivers and a broken Carson Wentz. Before that, he was the offensive coordinator in Philadelphia who made Wentz an MVP candidate in his second season as a pro and helped make Nick by-god Foles a Super Bowl champion.
Now Carolina has to find someone with Reich’s offensive pedigree AND convince them that things will be different in 2024. “Sure, the offense is still mostly spare parts and the last guy — a well-respected veteran coach with zero public off-field concerns — had the second-shortest coaching tenure in NFL history. But things will change under you [HOT RISING OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR/QBS COACH]!”
Tepper’s only fix here is to throw money at the problem. How much extra cash will it take to make Detroit Lions’ offensive coordinator Ben Johnson or Washington Commanders OC Eric Bieniemy (currently working for Tepper fire-ee Rivera) or Los Angeles Chargers OC Kellen Moore to take the Carolina job over prospective openings elsewhere?
The talent stinks. The culture stinks. The owner has proven time and time again he’s awful. This isn’t a job atop anyone’s wish list, unless their wish is to be publicly embarrassed, fired for being unable to complete a Sisyphean task and then paid gobs of money *not* to coach (which, on that last point, fair).
Tepper’s heavy hand as an owner isn’t limited to the Panthers. He’s fired two coaches in two years when it comes to his MLS franchise in Charlotte. He’s proven time and time again to have zero patience in a league that demands it. The fact he couldn’t even let Reich make it to Black Monday is another stain on his resume — one that includes zero winning seasons and a 23-54 overall record.
The Carolina Panthers currently have the league’s least appealing head coaching vacancy. No matter who is fired this offseason, it’s going to remain that way. Carolina’s roster is constructed for mediocrity, and the only way out is through. The only problem is the franchise is run by an owner with no patience for a rebuild and the lack of self control to let the coaches and executives he’s hired actually do their jobs.
Thus, the Panthers are primed to once again lead a well received coaching hire into the woods and strand him there. At least this time there are clear warning signs for whomever accepts the challenge.
