Panthers coach Matt Rhule is charming, but he talks a lot without saying anything
What I like the most about new Panthers head coach Matt Rhule is this: He’s got a lot of common sense.
What I like the least is how non-specific he is — he could definitely use a dose of David Tepper bluntness.
And yet the coach’s vagueness is understandable in some cases. As with a good offense, you just don’t know who’s getting the ball yet with Rhule, and he undoubtedly prefers it that way.
After watching Rhule through the first seven weeks of his tenure as the Panthers’ fifth head coach, I do better understand why Panthers owner Tepper and general manager Marty Hurney didn’t want to let the coach get on a plane to go interview with the New York Giants.
Rhule is a gregarious charmer, prone to self-deprecation and flights of fancy about championships and rings.
“He was talking to some of the staff,” Hurney said in January about one of Rhule’s first meetings as Panthers head coach. “I sat there thinking I feel like a bobblehead, because every time he talks, I’m just nodding my head.”
This is Rhule’s most obvious gift. The son of a pastor, Rhule has a knack for making people believe. Listening to him is a lot of fun, even though afterward you may shake your head and wonder exactly what it was you heard and why you liked it so much.
Rhule will be popular in the Carolina locker room — at least for this entire first season, which is a long time for any honeymoon — because of this inherent ability to connect.
But the coach can also be frustrating to write about because of his frequent references to “the process,” which is basically coachspeak for “We’re being methodical, we’re doing it one hour at a time over here and we don’t mind a bit if we’re boring the rest of you while we do that.”
He’s also a master at not getting cornered by any question. He effectively tap-dances around whatever he doesn’t want to answer, often using humor to defuse any potential tension. For him, life is like the universe — constantly expanding. There are no corners.
Rhule won’t commit to Cam “IHH” Newton as a Day 1 starter — the IHH stands for “If He’s Healthy” and is my new unofficial middle name/useful acronym for Newton. Yet Rhule professes to absolutely love the guy. He’d love to coach Cam IHH — but then again, he left open the possibility that he might not coach him.
.JPG "NFL Combine Football (2).JPG")
Rhule said he might team up with Hurney and draft a quarterback with the No. 7 overall pick in late April — or he might not. Much of that depends on IHH. He might lessen Christian McCaffrey’s workload because he loves the Panthers’ other running backs so much, too — or he might not. He wouldn’t even declare a single player on the current roster as a starter or likely starter in September, even McCaffrey, which is sort of silly given that McCaffrey is the NFL’s best running back.
To quote Newton’s mysterious “Is this directed at the Panthers?” Instagram post Tuesday: “All I want is a little commitment — and you can’t give me that?!”
Rhule’s ‘culture of competition’
If you listened carefully to what Rhule said about Newton on Tuesday in Indianapolis at the NFL scouting combine instead of just looking at the headlines, the coach talked a lot without saying much. He praised Newton as a father, player and community asset and said he expected Newton to be on the roster in September.
But while Rhule had every opportunity to say something like Chicago’s brass did Tuesday, declaring Mitchell Trubisky as the Bears’ starter in 2020, he didn’t do that. While he made it sound unlikely the Panthers would release Newton with no compensation, especially IHH, he didn’t quite close that door, nor the “Trade him” door, nor the “Let’s draft another QB” door.
“I want to create a culture of competition,” Rhule said. “I want to create a culture where nothing’s promised to anybody. I think in years two and three (of Rhule’s tenure), maybe it’ll be a little bit different. But that being said, I don’t think that has anything to do with Cam. That just has to do with overall philosophy.”
More from Rhule on Newton: “I’ll just say I really want him on the team and I really want him to be healthy. I know when Cam’s healthy, who he is and the type of player he is. My focus — you’ll hear me say I’m a process-oriented guy — to me it’s just about: ‘Are we doing all the things to get him healthy?’ When Cam’s healthy, he’s one of the best of the best. I won’t speculate on the future of anybody on our team.”
Confused yet? That’s on purpose. Rhule is making sure other teams know that if they’re interested in Newton, they will have to trade for him because the Panthers still like him enough to keep him and maybe even start him. And that’s true as far as the quarterbacks on the roster — even Newton at 80 percent would be better than Kyle Allen or Will Grier.
Newton’s murky state
But Newton has had two shoulder surgeries and a foot surgery in the past three years. He doesn’t run like he used to. Passing a physical would be a problem right now. Newton is also perceived as somewhat damaged goods due to that spate of injuries. And so the common-sense approach from the Panthers should indeed be to praise Newton vociferously and include him in everything — until it’s time to move on from him.
I still think that the “moving on” will occur this year — I’ve written several times I believe Newton and the team will part ways at some point before September. But I’ve been dead wrong before.
Rhule would help his cause with a few more specifics. His generalism is over the top sometimes and seems a little bit like a leftover from his college days at Baylor and Temple.
But I get it. With the NFL regular season so far away, Rhule is keeping all his options open in his ever-expanding universe of football possibilities. For now, he can do it any way he wants. No matter what, no matter IHH or not, Rhule is still not going to lose a game for more than six months.
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 4:23 PM.
