By hiring Matt Rhule, Panthers owner David Tepper checked almost every box
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Panthers hire Matt Rhule
Expanded coverage of Carolina’s new head coach
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The new era of Panthers football starts now.
The team has hired Matt Rhule as the franchise’s fifth full-time head coach, a source with knowledge of the decision told the Observer on Tuesday morning. For the first time in history, Carolina has hired a head coach directly from the college ranks and one with an offensive background.
The Panthers confirmed the news Tuesday afternoon.
Rhule spent the past three seasons as Baylor’s head coach, leading the Bears to an 11-3 record and a Sugar Bowl appearance in 2019 after the team went 1-11 just two years prior. With the team’s success, Baylor became the first Power 5 program to go from 11 losses to 11 wins within two seasons.
Rhule, 44,reportedly signed a seven-year contract worth up to $70 million, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
“I felt like this was the right place at the right time,” Rhule said in an interview with ESPN Central Texas radio Tuesday. “You have a new owner who is committed to doing things the best way, very much a process-oriented person. That’s really all I want. I want to go to a place that’s not going to flail in the wind, that’s going to be routed in rock, that has a process that they believe in. As we talked (Monday) it was very clear that my process and their process could be one and the same.”
The Panthers and Rhule agreed to a deal Tuesday morning just hours after owner David Tepper and other team executives met with him Monday at his home in Waco, Texas.
The Giants were also interested in hiring him, and he had been reportedly scheduled to interview with them Tuesday; however, Patriots’ assistant coach Joe Judge is instead set to become New York’s head coach, according to multiple reports.
When Tepper met with the media following the firing of former coach Ron Rivera last month, he spoke on why a college coach would not be his first choice and the difficulties that can come from the transition to the professional ranks.
“I do understand the difficulty of the transition, though,” Tepper said. “That doesn’t mean I’m closing it off, but you got to understand anybody that’s been around football understands the difficulty of that transition from the college game to here, and different demands here.”
But Rhule is no stranger to tough transitions and turning things around. He took over a Baylor program marred in sexual assault scandals under former head coach Art Briles, who was fired one season earlier, and quickly changed the culture. He led the Bears to their first Big 12 championship appearance in 2019. Despite losing to Oklahoma in the championship, the season will be regarded as one of the best in program history.
“The last three years have been a special time in our lives, and so it was hard to say, ‘hey let’s move and go do something new.’ ” Rhule said in his radio interview. “But I certainly feel like we left the program better than we found it and that’s always my goal anywhere I’ve been.”
Tepper said in that December meeting with reporters that he was looking for a few key things in his new head coach — someone who is offensive-minded, a mix of “old-school toughness” and openness to the “more modern processes,” and someone with an NFL background.
Rhule fits all of those but one. Almost all of the candidates interviewed by the Panthers are current NFL offensive coordinators or former head coaches in the NFL. He was the exception.
But all of the other areas Tepper was looking for Rhule filled. At Baylor, he had a program and staff that was focused on using sports science and player development to help the team’s performance. The Applied Performance Department used data and other research to help all athletes at Baylor perform to the best of their ability. There’s no doubt that Rhule’s desire to build a similar type of group with the Panthers aligned with Tepper’s vision.
Even Saints coach Sean Payton, who met Rhule in the lead up to the Sugar Bowl, had kind things to say about the new Panthers coach when asked by local media, saying he was “really impressive.”
This was not the first offseason that Rhule had interviewed with NFL teams for their head coaching jobs. After each season at Baylor, he has interviewed for at least one NFL job, including reportedly meeting with the Colts after the 2017 season and the Jets last year.
Rivera, who has since been hired in Washington, took select members of his Panthers staff with him, leaving more vacancies for Rhule to fill in Charlotte, including Ryan Vermillion, the team’s head athletic trainer for 18 seasons. Possible coaches that have been associated with Rhule for assistant jobs include his defensive coordinator at Baylor, Phillip Snow, and Lions quarterback coach Sean Ryan, who was on the Giants’ staff with Rhule in 2012.
Hiring staff with NFL experience will likely be a key for Rhule due to his limited experience. One possible name out there for consideration is Wade Phillips, who was fired as the Rams’ defensive coordinator Monday. No matter who his coordinators and other assistants end up being, what is clear is that they will be Rhules’ choice. Throughout the process leading up to the hiring, the coach said that if he was going to take a new job, he wanted control over the “program,” not just x’s and o’s.
Before getting the job at Baylor, Rhule spent the previous four seasons as the head coach at Temple, where after going 2-10 and 6-6, he led the Owls to back-to-back 10-win seasons from 2015-16. Prior to that, he spent one year in the NFL as the assistant offensive line coach with the Giants.
Rhule was also an assistant at Temple (2006-11), including four seasons as offensive coordinator, Western Carolina (2002-05), UCLA (2001), Buffalo (1999-2000) and Albright College (1998). He has experience working a variety of position groups, including offensive line, quarterbacks and defensive line.
He is a New York native and Penn State graduate after walking on to the team as a linebacker under coach Joe Paterno.
The Panthers fired Rivera with four games remaining in 2019 after accumulating a 76-63-1 regular-season record — the most wins in franchise history — and a 3-4 postseason record. It was the first midseason head coach firing in team history.
Rhule is the first head coach hired under owner David Tepper.
This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 9:57 AM.
