Why did Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield fail with the Carolina Panthers? An inside look
In the summer of 2022, the Carolina Panthers had a quarterback battle in training camp between two players who would become top-10 NFL QBs in 2024.
Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield, who will lead different teams into the NFL playoffs this weekend, competed all summer in Spartanburg.
This was on a team that had an embarrassment of riches by Carolina standards in the skill positions. The two QBs could choose to throw or hand the ball off to Pro Bowl running back Christian McCaffrey, No. 1 wide receiver DJ Moore, backup running back Chuba Hubbard, backup running back D’Onta Foreman (who would gain 914 yards that season) and mercurial speedster Robbie Anderson.
And yet Darnold and Mayfield both failed in Charlotte. Mayfield won the training-camp battle, but nobody won the war.
By 2024, however, Darnold was leading Minnesota to a 14-3 record and earning a spot in the Pro Bowl. Mayfield was directing Tampa Bay to another NFC South title and finishing in the top three in the NFL in touchdown passes (alongside Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow and Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson).
Mayfield’s Bucs, seeded No. 3, host Washington at 8 p.m. Sunday in a first-round NFL playoff game. The fifth-seeded Vikings play at the Los Angeles Rams at 8 p.m. Monday.
Some perspective: Even though Bryce Young improved significantly in the second half of the season as Carolina’s quarterback, his numbers and wins pale in comparison to what Darnold and Mayfield have done in 2024.
In fact, in two full seasons with the Panthers, Young has 26 TD passes and six wins as a starter. In this season alone, Darnold had 35 TDs and 14 wins. Mayfield had 41 and 10.
So why did this happen? How did Darnold and Mayfield both not work out in Carolina under head coach Matt Rhule and owner David Tepper and then work out so spectacularly elsewhere?
To find out, I spoke to a number of current and former players and executives with the Panthers. Some were granted anonymity to discuss a delicate situation.
Several sources said the problem was coaching — the lack of offensive creativity in particular compared to what Darnold and Mayfield receive now.
“The environment on the football side wasn’t set up for success, no matter how talented the players were,” said one Panthers source with direct knowledge of the team’s inner workings in 2022.
The numbers will tell you that Rhule and then-offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo didn’t maximize the performance of two quarterbacks destined to make the Pro Bowl in the next two years. Darnold went 8-9 in two partial years as Carolina’s starter. Mayfield was 1-5. Their TD/interception ratios weren’t far off what Young’s has been in 2023 and 2024.
Another Panthers source, a player who was an essential part of the 2022 team, said the head coach-starting quarterback relationship is the most essential relationship on any NFL team, and that it was obvious it never really gelled with Rhule and either QB.
There was a train of thought inside the locker room, too, that player said, that Mayfield in particular wasn’t used correctly — that he often had to throw from a stagnant pocket, instead of utilizing the sort of movement and shifts that he has thrived upon in Cleveland and Tampa Bay.
When reached, Rhule declined to comment on whether or not he and the Panthers’ old coaching staff should shoulder much of the blame. He did say he always thought Darnold and Mayfield could be excellent NFL players.
“I’ve always believed in the talent and potential of both Sam and Baker, and it’s exciting to see them performing at such a high level,” said Rhule, now the head coach at Nebraska. “While things didn’t work out as we hoped during our time in Carolina, their success is a testament to their resilience and determination. The NFL is full of stories like theirs, and it’s inspiring to see how they’ve found the right opportunities to showcase their abilities and thrive.”
How Darnold, Mayfield became teammates
Darnold and Mayfield have been linked together since the 2018 NFL Draft, when Oklahoma’s Mayfield was the first overall pick (to Cleveland) and Southern Cal’s Darnold went No. 3 overall (to the N.Y. Jets).
Darnold arrived in Charlotte in April 2021, with the Panthers and general manager Scott Fitterer trading three draft picks (including a second- and a fourth-rounder) to acquire him from the Jets, where he had often floundered with a bad team. Carolina was by then anxious to part ways with Teddy Bridgewater, who had an uneven 2020 season at quarterback in Rhule’s first year. The Panthers traded Bridgewater away a week after acquiring Darnold, then quickly installed Darnold as the starter.
Under offensive coordinator Joe Brady and Rhule, Darnold started beautifully. The Panthers went 3-0 in his first three games.
But then McCaffrey got hurt, Darnold started making mistakes and the wheels soon came off. Carolina went 2-12 over the final 14 games in 2021.
Darnold was hurt some of that time, but he went 1-7 in the final eight games that he started. He ended up with 9 passing TDs and 13 interceptions, which still stands as the worst TD/INT ratio of his career. An obviously compromised Cam Newton was even brought in as a desperation measure toward the end of the 2021 season, but Newton 2.0 was a highly-publicized flop. He went 0-5 as a starter that year and never played in another NFL game.
So by 2022, the Panthers were ready to give Darnold some serious competition in training camp. After not drafting a quarterback in the first round, the Panthers got Mayfield on the cheap in early July, just three weeks before training camp began.
The Panthers had to give up what turned out to only be a fifth-round pick to get Mayfield, who like Darnold would be playing on an expiring contract. Fitterer, who acquired both QBs as Carolina’s general manager and was fired in January 2024, wouldn’t comment for this story.
A note: Rhule had actually advocated for trading for Mayfield during and immediately after the 2022 draft, according to several people with knowledge of the Panthers’ draft room at the time. This idea was scotched in April 2022, but then was revived two months later.
By then, Darnold had a six-month head start on new offensive coordinator McAdoo’s system. (Brady had been fired during the 2021 season by Rhule — the two had some philosophical disagreements and Rhule publicly said he wanted to run the ball more — but has since landed on his feet. Brady is now the offensive coordinator with Buffalo, one of the Super Bowl favorites).
In the summer of 2022, Mayfield seemed to catch up quickly as he and Darnold pushed each other in practice and also hung out some off the field.
“It’s not about trying to stab one another in the back,” Mayfield said during that training camp in Spartanburg. “It’s about elevating, because the franchise and the team go as the QB room goes.”
Rhule, Mayfield lasted 5 games together
Rhule thought Mayfield looked better in camp than Darnold. So after going 10-23 in his first two seasons and badly needing to win to keep his job, Rhule decided to start a quarterback in Week 1 that had only joined the team two months before.
The decision was huge. Because while the Panthers had played decent defense during Rhule’s 38-game tenure, they never could score enough points. Rhule would finish his career 1-27 at Carolina when the other team scored 17 or more points. The Panthers never got the sort of 44-38 shootout victory that Young and the Panthers closed out the 2024 season with at Atlanta.
Mayfield, though, didn’t make the offense more dynamic. While the offensive system didn’t help, it also wasn’t ideal that he didn’t report in great shape. Mayfield in 2024 with Tampa Bay seems far quicker when he scrambles out of the pocket than when he played in 2022 for Carolina.
Rhule had wanted Mayfield and pounded the table to get him in the draft and afterward. But hitching his wagon to Mayfield turned out to be one of the last significant moves of the coach’s tenure.
The Panthers went 1-4 in their first five games of 2022 and Mayfield struggled, with four interceptions and four TD passes. He never threw for 250-plus yards in a game, and his feet tended to get choppy when he was under pressure.
After a 37-15 loss to San Francisco in front of a Bank of America “home” crowd that was almost entirely 49ers red by the end, Rhule was fired. The common thinking at the time was he was better suited to be a college head coach, and indeed he has started to turn the Nebraska program around.
Steve Wilks replaced Rhule as the interim coach and barely played Mayfield — who also was fighting an injury — after that. PJ Walker started five games in 2022 and Mayfield got one more start (he lost that one, too). Darnold would start six games late in the season, going 4-2 in those games as the Panthers had a small late-season resurgence under Wilks, whose offense more heavily emphasized the run.
Wilks wasn’t retained, as Tepper moved on to hire Frank Reich (who would himself be fired only 11 games into the 2023 season). Darnold wasn’t retained, either.
Darnold would sign as a backup to San Francisco in 2023, where he barely played. In 2024, however, Darnold signed a one-year deal with the Vikings — his fourth team in five years. He then became Minnesota’s starter following a preseason knee injury to first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy that knocked the rookie out for the season.
Darnold has played so well he’s going to be the most sought-after veteran free agent in the 2025 offseason market, likely commanding a similar salary to what Mayfield now makes (three years, $100 million).
As for Mayfield’s final days with the Panthers, he fell so far on the depth chart midway through the 2022 season that he started taking reps with the scout team. Sometimes he was the quarterback, but at one practice he was seen playing for the scout team — taking reps as a defensive lineman with his hand in the dirt.
Not surprisingly given that quick fall from grace, Mayfield asked for his release in December 2022. It was granted. Mayfield was quickly picked up by the quarterback-needy L.A. Rams, and only two days later led the Rams to a comeback win that made national headlines. In the offseason, he signed with Tampa Bay, where he has since directed two consecutive playoff teams (the first with offensive coordinator Dave Canales, who the Panthers then scooped up as their head coach in early 2024).
It’s true that both Mayfield and Darnold have benefited from throwing to future Pro Football Hall of Famers — Mayfield has Mike Evans and Darnold has Justin Jefferson. But again, in Carolina, they both had the benefit of McCaffrey (when he wasn’t hurt or, later, traded) and Moore. The cupboard was much barer for Young in 2023 than it was for either Mayfield or Darnold during their time in Carolina.
What was David Tepper’s role?
What was Tepper’s role in all this? Those closest to the situation have mixed feelings. Obviously, Tepper was the one who hired Rhule. So Rhule would never have gone 11-27 in Carolina if Tepper hadn’t hired him in the first place.
Tepper, a hands-on businessman who is a hedge fund billionaire, is the sort of owner who wants to talk to his decision-makers, both to understand their rationale and to sometimes challenge it.
“Too many times Tepper would mandate changes be made too quickly,” said one Panthers source with knowledge of the team during Mayfield and Darnold’s tenure.
Countered another Panthers source with knowledge of the Rhule era, pushing back on the idea Tepper was ordering on-field changes: “People throw people under the bus instead of being accountable. That happens a lot in this league. The numbers don’t lie.”
Panthers tight end Tommy Tremble was a rookie in 2021 and is one of a handful of offensive players still on the team four years later. Of why it went wrong for Mayfield and Darnold, Tremble said on Monday that 2021 and 2022 were “a wild few years.”
“A lot of ups and downs,” Tremble said. “A lot of coaching changes. And I think that’s hard to get past, because when stuff is going up and down, back and forth, it’s hard to get comfortable. It’s hard to get your rhythm down. And I’m so proud of those dudes doing their thing, man. I’m excited for them, both great people and ballers getting their recognition. ... I pray for their success. They’re good guys.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
