Inside the Carolina Panthers’ disastrous season: What went wrong, and what comes next
Nobody at Bank of America Stadium expected it to be nearly this bad.
The Carolina Panthers’ nightmarish season comes to a merciful close Sunday, when the team with an NFL-worst 2-14 record faces playoff-seeking Tampa Bay at 1 p.m. at home in Charlotte.
Then comes another rebuilding process for the Panthers from January through August 2024, with a new head coach, a new staff and a slew of new playmakers — but with Bryce Young still entrenched at quarterback.
For a Carolina team that went 7-10 in 2022 and thought it had improved in the offseason, what has happened this year has been a punch to the face — one that has had all sorts of repercussions. Owner David Tepper fired head coach Frank Reich only 11 games into a four-year deal, and it’s gotten no better since.
The fate of general manager Scott Fitterer — along with Reich, the other primary architect of this season — remains uncertain. Fitterer has received no assurances that he will still be employed with the Panthers in 2024, after Carolina has posted a 14-36 record in his three years as GM (worst in the NFL during that time period). Then again, Fitterer is well-liked in the building, well-respected in league circles and, for now, still doing the job.
This column is based primarily on my own observations, as well as on conversations I’ve had throughout the 2023 season in and around the stadium while covering the Panthers for a 29th consecutive season. Some of those conversations came with NFL sources who wanted to stay anonymous so they could speak freely, but the opinions here are ultimately mine.
One thing that has become clear: The latest rebuilding effort — both in free agency and in the 2024 draft — will almost all be directed at the Panthers’ tepid offense, where the turnover will be major, no matter who the new head coach turns out to be.
I’m going to divide this into two sections, for simplicity’s sake:
Five things that went wrong in 2023, as well as six moves that are coming soon in 2024 and, if done correctly, could improve the Panthers’ stock considerably.
5 things that went wrong
It was hard to narrow it down to five, but these, to me, are the most important.
1) Skill players who didn’t produce
The Panthers’ awful offense has a lot of problems — offensive line protection issues and a rookie QB learning on the job remain two of the biggest.
But one of the Panthers’ biggest miscalculations came with two players signed in the offseason by Fitterer, with positive input from Reich and others: wide receiver D.J. Chark and running back Miles Sanders.
Chark was supposed to be the Panthers’ “speed guy,” a player who could scare defenses into respecting the deep ball in much the same way Ted Ginn Jr. did a decade ago. And this seemed possible in training camp.
But after an early hamstring injury, Chark’s speed has rarely shown up. In a league where top wide receivers hit 20-22 miles per hour when at full speed, Chark’s top speed all season has been 19.7 mph, according to information provided to me by Zebra Technologies and NFL Next Gen Stats. A speed of 19.7 ranks outside of the top 100 fastest wide receiver speeds clocked all season. That’s not what the Panthers thought they were buying.
A 2 mph difference in speed may not seem like much, but it’s huge when you’re trying to get defenders off the line.
Chark is a nice guy who has had a couple of nice games, most notably a two-TD effort against Green Bay on Christmas Eve. He leads the team in receiving touchdowns with five. But he also has only 33 catches for 479 yards — poor numbers for an NFL starter — and dropped three balls in a single series last week in Jacksonville. He’s on a prove-it, one-year contract, and you can rest assured that he won’t be back in Charlotte in 2024.
The Panthers gave Sanders a four-year, $25.4-million contract — an anomaly in an NFL that now largely views running backs as interchangeable parts. Carolina had a vision of Sanders catching about 50 passes this season as a threat out of the backfield.
However, this signing now looks like a mistake. Sanders has caught only 27 passes and has averaged only 3.3 yards per rush, with his usage declining significantly by the week. Sanders is more of a dancer in the backfield than Chuba Hubbard, and there’s generally been no room to dance.
It turns out that Sanders is pedestrian when he’s not running behind a Philadelphia Eagles line littered with Pro Bowlers. Hubbard has replaced him in the starting lineup. Sanders’ extremely disappointing year has been compounded by Carolina’s new blocking scheme, which didn’t work in his favor.
Wide receiver Adam Thielen, by contrast, was a coup for the Panthers — a new player who’s had an excellent season and is the easy choice as offensive MVP. But ideally, Thielen would be your No. 2 or No. 3 receiver on a good offense, not your No. 1 receiver on a very bad one.
2) An offensive line regression
The Panthers thought going into the 2023 season that the offensive line would be a strength. Instead, it’s turned into a major weakness. A turnstile at both offensive guard positions and a new blocking scheme that has foundered badly — along with the sudden regression of left tackle Ickey Ekwonu — are to blame.
For a short quarterback like Young, who’s 5-foot-10, pressure in your face up the middle is the most difficult thing to deal with. But center Bradley Bozeman and the rotating cast of guards on either side of him have routinely allowed it.
Last week, Jacksonville attacked the Panthers over and over again at the guard positions, an enormous factor in Carolina’s 26-0 loss — the first time the Panthers had been shut out since 2002. Carolina has started five different left guards and seven different right guards this year due to injury and ineffectiveness.
Meanwhile, Ekwonu — the No. 6 overall pick of the 2022 draft — has also taken a step backward in what he calls “a humbling year.” Ekwonu’s footwork hasn’t been great and his confidence has taken a hit. He looks stressed. He’s given up too many sacks and had a difficult time working with the left guards beside him when other teams run pass-rushing games designed to confuse. Ekwonu is still on a cap-friendly contract, so he’s not going anywhere, but he absolutely must be better in 2024.
As for the blocking scheme: With Reich, the Panthers went from a north-to-south, ground-and-pound rushing attack that worked well in their final 12 games of 2022 under interim coach Steve Wilks (they had a 6-6 record under Wilks, and, as I’ve written, the team should have hired him to the permanent job) to a zone-heavy scheme. That blocking style required linemen to move more in space and has really hurt Bozeman’s production.
Carolina also has done Young no favors by not sticking with the running game enough (last week was a good example), not keeping him under center enough and too often putting him in an empty, five-wide set in the shotgun, advertising to pass rushers, “Come and get me!”
In other words, although the Panthers didn’t mean to, the coaching staff and front office have set Young up to fail as a rookie. And he certainly did, while the line collapsed around him.
3) 2 trades that happened, 1 that didn’t
In retrospect, three trades are haunting the Panthers right now — two they made and one they didn’t.
The one they didn’t: Carolina could have traded edge rusher Brian Burns to the L.A. Rams in 2022 for a third-round pick in 2023 and first-round picks in 2024 and 2025. The Panthers thought about this one hard and, I believe, should have done it. They would have been trading Burns at the very peak of his value and would have allowed the team to get multiple players in return.
Instead, Carolina is stuck in a salary no-man’s-land with Burns, who was asking for a reported $30 million per year before this season began and whose production has dipped (12.5 sacks in 2022, 7 in 2023). The Panthers will likely need to use a franchise tag on him in the offseason.
Then there is the Christian McCaffrey trade, the one the Panthers probably regret the most, if they’re being honest with themselves.
In 2022, they shipped McCaffrey to San Francisco for four draft picks — none of them were first-rounders, however. McCaffrey, who was hurt a lot in his final three years at Carolina, has been remarkably healthy in San Francisco and is undoubtedly the NFL’s best running back. He’s irreplaceable and is having a career year (as are former Panthers D.J. Moore and Baker Mayfield on other teams).
The third trade is the one that brought Young to Carolina. The rookie has struggled despite being the No.1 overall pick. That’s the trade that shipped Moore to Chicago and, even more importantly, what will turn out to be the No. 1 pick of the 2024 draft. Ouch. So far it seems like Chicago fleeced Carolina, as did the 49ers.
With the Young deal, though, I don’t think you can evaluate it fully until Young has better playmakers and protection around him.
4) A coach fired after 11 games
I’ve written so much about Panthers owner David Tepper in the past week that I’m going to barely mention him in this column, since this is mostly personnel-related and Tepper (despite what you’ve heard on social media) really doesn’t make personnel decisions unilaterally.
But a few words about Tepper here: I think firing Reich after 11 games served no real purpose, other than to throw this year’s team into further disarray. It’s not like he got a head start on hiring the next coach.
According to everyone I’ve talked to, as well as what Tepper has said publicly, the owner wasn’t the guiding force pushing Young on the Panthers rather than C.J. Stroud, even though this rumor crops up constantly.
For better or worse, Young was a unanimous decision among Carolina’s key decision-makers at the time, with Stroud in second position. So they all own that one. Not just Tepper.
5) The QB carousel
The overarching problem for the Panthers during Tepper’s 98-game tenure as owner has been a simple one: They can’t find a productive quarterback. This isn’t a 2023 problem so much as a recurring problem.
After Cam Newton got hurt and old at the same time, they thought they had a deal with Matthew Stafford done in the first days of Fitterer’s employment (he began in January 2021, with coach Matt Rhule already in place). But Stafford then bolted for the L.A. Rams instead and won a Super Bowl there.
The Panthers also pursued DeShaun Watson (a bad idea all the way around). They’ve tried Teddy Bridgewater, Mayfield, Sam Darnold, P.J. Walker and, now, are force-feeding Young. And it hasn’t worked yet. But this position is destined to stay the same in 2024 — Young isn’t going anywhere, and the Panthers like Andy Dalton as his backup. Young’s development is key — sometimes he has a flash of greatness, sometimes he looks skittish and too often he doesn’t get the team into the end zone.
6 moves coming in 2024
There will be more than six, and of course Fitterer’s future is still cloudy. But you can bank on these half-dozen.
1) The new coach
The Panthers’ next big hire will be a new coach. Theirs won’t be the NFL’s most appealing job: that will be the Los Angeles Chargers, who already have a standout quarterback in Justin Herbert.
The Panthers are going to have to market themselves. Will Tepper’s tantrum in Jackonsville wasn’t a good look for any prospective coaches and also cost him $300,000, more relevant is the fact that Tepper has fired three head coaches during the season in only six years. No one wants to be embarrassed like that.
But the new coach will have the benefit of all those zeroes on the check Tepper will write, as well as a honeymoon period that will extend a bit longer than usual because of the previous season’s disastrous record. He won’t have a No. 1 draft pick, though, and he will have to believe in Young as a QB.
Ideally, the Panthers want an offensive-minded head coach, because that’s where they are most deficient. I doubt Carolina defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero will get this job, although certainly he will get interviewed for it, and his work this season has been laudable. The Panthers will look hard at Detroit offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, as will other teams.
Also likely in the mix: Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, Dolphins offensive coordinator Frank Smith and Dallas defensive coordinator Dan Quinn.
2) The new No. 1 wideout
The Panthers think they can have 1,000-yard receiver Adam Thielen and rookie Jonathan Mingo (43 receptions, zero touchdowns in 2023) as their No. 2 and No. 3 wide receivers in 2024. What they will shop for is a No. 1, and this will be a high-profile free agent acquisition.
Anybody want to dream about Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins? Or Jacksonville’s Calvin Ridley? Both would be very high on the Panthers’ wish list, although it’s quite possible both of them will end up with franchise tags. Other possibilities: Buffalo’s Gabriel Davis, Chicago’s Darnell Mooney and Arizona’s Marquise Brown.
3) The new tight end
Could the Panthers use their first draft pick in 2024 — No. 33 overall — on a new tight end? That seems plausible. Last year’s free agent, Hayden Hurst, just hasn’t worked out as a big threat down the seam, even before he got hurt. The other tight ends just aren’t consistent threats in the passing game. The Panthers have been trying to replace Greg Olsen for years and are primed to take another shot at it, either via the draft or free agency or both.
4) The new offensive linemen
The Panthers will again be shopping for an offensive lineman — either a guard or a guard-tackle combo, or both. They hope that Austin Corbett and Brady Christensen can hold down the guard positions in 2024, but both were hurt for the majority of 2023, and the Panthers got caught without enough depth.
5) The new contracts
Carolina’s biggest offseason priorities for their own free agents are both on defense. The Panthers badly want to keep Burns — who will probably need a franchise tag, at least initially — and linebacker Frankie Luvu (one of Fitterer’s best finds).
Luvu has long been a bargain but is going to need a lot more money to stay. Burns will have to come off that $30-million-a-year price to get a long-term deal.
Cornerback C.J. Henderson also will be an unrestricted free agent, and the Panthers will not try to bring him back. He has been an underperformer. Chark, as mentioned previously, also seems certain to be set free.
6) The new Young whisperers
The next set of coaches will have to give Young some help.
Besides better protection and playmakers, though, they’ve got to give him some more options: more plays under center, more bootlegs and a better running game. It’s been very fortunate that Young is still walking around after starting 15 of a possible 16 games behind this offensive line.
The next coach’s No. 1 job will be to get more out of Young. If he does, other things will start to fall into place, and the Panthers won’t be a league punchline any longer. I promise that will happen one day, Carolina fans. But after this lost year, no one can promise you when.
This story was originally published January 5, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
