Washington’s Ron Rivera on cancer, Taco Bell and his biggest regret as Panthers coach
Ron Rivera has had a busy week. A busy year, really, starting with a new job, and then a cancer diagnosis, a quarterback merry-go-round and now, quite possibly, the NFL playoffs. Rivera’s new Washington team will host his old Carolina team Sunday at 4:05 p.m.
But here was “Riverboat Ron” on the phone, taking 25 minutes away from game-day preparation to do a one-on-one interview with The Charlotte Observer, and first of all wanting to make sure that Charlotte knew that he and his wife, Stephanie, still love the place.
“It’s easy to fall in love with the Queen City,” Rivera said. “It really is. And it’s even easier to fall in love with the people that are there. We still are friends with so many people there.”
Rivera wouldn’t address whether the Washington Football Team may hire Marty Hurney, his former GM at Carolina, now that the Panthers fired Hurney earlier this week. But the coach did talk about cancer, mortality and Taco Bell.
As for what his biggest regret during his nine years with the Panthers was, Rivera first answered that question by saying: “I really don’t have one.”
Then: “No, wait, I take that back.”
If you only want the answer to that question, skip to the end of his column. But if you want a fuller picture of what Rivera has been going through since he became Washington’s head coach on Jan. 1 following his firing at Carolina on Dec. 3, 2019, read on. Here are five things I learned from this interview:
This isn’t the Ron Rivera Revenge Bowl
At least not according to Rivera it isn’t, although he understands why people are labeling it that way. Rivera’s fond memories of the Panthers and Charlotte in his nine-year tenure from 2011-19 overwhelm the bad ones, he said, and he’s not bitter about the way he got fired, either. So he’s trying to downplay that storyline and instead emphasize Washington’s chance at making the playoffs.
Rivera said this game would have been more emotional for him had it been the 2020 season opener, which he had guessed it was going to be. Instead, for Rivera, both teams have already played 14 games and this one is about the postseason.
“This is about our opportunity as a football team,” Rivera said. “Lo and behold, we’ve got something to play for.”
If the New York Giants (5-9) lose their 1 p.m. game against Baltimore on Sunday and then Washington (6-8) beats Carolina (4-10) at home at 4:05 p.m., Washington will clinch the NFC East and a first-round playoff home game.
Would that be a particularly special way to clinch a playoff berth, by beating his old team?
“I don’t think so,” Rivera said.
In fact, the coach said beating Seattle the week before would have meant just as much or more to him, since Seattle “always was getting in the way” of Carolina’s progress during his time with the Panthers.
Fighting cancer
On Aug. 20, Rivera announced he had cancer. Specifically, he had squamous cell cancer in his throat.
At 58, Rivera is exactly the age Kevin Greene was when he died unexpectedly on Monday. The two were peers in the NFL, and Greene’s death was yet another reminder to Rivera of his own mortality. He’s had a lot of those over the past four months, as his wife and daughter have had to drive him to and from his treatments. He’s frequently had to go to bed by 8:30 p.m. because he was so tired.
“I’m in the recovery phase now,” Rivera said. “I started treatments September 8th and I finished October 26th. I did 35 radiation proton therapy treatments and three cycles of chemo. And so now, in the recovery phase, it’s really about the body repairing itself. Healing up the wounds. Getting my strength and stamina back. Getting rid of the brain fog that I get on occasion.”
Rivera never missed coaching a game, but he had to miss several practices because of his treatments. He described his lowest point as a Tuesday in October when he went from a treatment to Washington’s football offices, got an IV there and still felt terrible. He told the trainer he had to go back home.
“So they helped me back to my car,” Rivera said. “Stephanie drove me home because I couldn’t drive at the time. I went upstairs to bed. She tried to get me up for lunch. I wouldn’t get up. She tried to get me up for dinner. I wouldn’t get up.”
A worried Stephanie Rivera called the team doctor about her husband. Rivera said he woke up to get on the phone with the team doctor, who “really let me have it” about not keeping his strength up by eating.
“So then I hung up,” Rivera said, chuckling at the memory. “Stephanie came over and literally pulled me out of bed and helped me downstairs. The whole time she was yelling at me.”
Then the couple’s daughter, Courtney, got in on the action and yelled at her father, too, about why he had to eat. She had to walk away because she was so upset though, Rivera said.
Not to be outdone, the family dog Tahoe then came up to Rivera and “nudged me,” the coach said, “because he saw Stephanie yelling at me. And then he left, too.”
Rivera was left alone with some toast and a bowl of chicken noodle soup, which he forced down. The next morning he made himself drink a protein shake, even though it has hurt for him to swallow for months. “No matter how much it hurt, I made myself drink that shake because at that moment I realized that if I don’t eat, I’m in trouble,” Rivera said.
Taco Bell and Mountain Dew
Rivera would end up losing 36 pounds during his treatments as his weight dropped to 230. His sense of taste was altered by the treatments, too, so he began to eat and drink things he never would normally. At the football facility, he would sometimes ask the team chef to make him two pancakes “and about a cup and a half of syrup,” he said, because that would be the only way he could swallow them.
As for drinking water? No way. “Absolutely terrible,” Rivera said. “It tasted like salt water.”
Rivera had to drink something, though. “I started drinking watermelon juice,” he said. “Then I went to pear juice. Then apple juice. But all of those kept tasting bad, or bland, or salty or whatever. This was also during a phase when I was trying to figure out what to eat. And one day when Stephanie came to pick me up from work, I just said to her: ‘I feel like Taco Bell tacos.’ ”
So Rivera got two crunchy tacos and a Mountain Dew from Taco Bell. “It went down and it stayed down and it tasted delicious,” Rivera said. “I told Stephanie, ‘I think we found my go-to meal.’ ”
Later, Rivera also decided that he could drink root beer. “So during the last three weeks of my treatments, the two drinks I would have at lunch or dinner were either Mountain Dew or root beer,” he said.
Washington and Carolina parallels
Rivera sometimes refers to his time with Carolina when he’s at Washington and uses some of the same expressions with his players, such as “Be where your feet are.”
There is another parallel that Rivera has often been struck by this season: The way Washington’s season has paralleled the Panthers’ season in 2014. “It’s really a mirror,” Rivera said.
In 2014, Carolina began the year 3-2-1 but then lost six games in a row. Because the NFC South was having a down year everywhere, though, the Panthers still weren’t out of contention. They wound up winning four straight games to close the season, won the South for the second straight time and then won a playoff game against Arizona before getting knocked out of the postseason by Seattle.
Although Rivera won the AP Coach of the Year award in 2013 and 2015, he has always considered that season in 2014 his best coaching job at Carolina.
The NFC East is having a similarly down year this season. Nobody will finish with a winning record. Washington (6-8, but 4-1 in its last five) sits a game in front of the Giants and Dallas Cowboys (both 5-9). Rivera said he at first thought this would be a developmental year for Washington, but after seeing everyone in the division struggle, decided to play more to win right now. That was part of the reason for benching quarterback Dwayne Haskins, whose poor decision-making was in evidence again this past week.
Panther regrets and memories
To close, I asked Rivera about his favorite Panther wins ever and his biggest regret.
“I remember my first win against Jacksonville,” Rivera said of a 2011 game played partly in a rainstorm. “I remember beating New England at home in 2013, and beating New Orleans at home that same year, and then going to Atlanta and beating the Falcons in Atlanta.”
He also fondly recalled a snowy practice just before the NFC championship game in the 2015 postseason, one in which the Panthers practiced with such childlike enthusiasm that practice observers Troy Aikman and Jimmie Johnson both told Rivera afterward there was no doubt Carolina was about to win that game. That was his favorite practice in nine years, Rivera said.
As for the regrets? Rivera has had a few. He wanted to win Super Bowl 50 against Denver, of course, and mentioned that as a regret in his farewell press conference. He wishes Cam Newton could have been healthier in 2018 and 2019, giving the Panthers a better chance of winning in both of those seasons. But the one he mentioned in our conversation this time was this.
“It took me too long to become Riverboat Ron,” Rivera said. “If I had done that sooner, in my career, we might have won a few more games my first two years.”
The Panthers were 2-12 in games decided by seven points or fewer in Rivera’s first two seasons with Carolina, in 2011 and 2012. They started winning far more close games in 2013, when Rivera — still several years ahead of the NFL’s “go-for-it” analytics trend — decided to start taking more risks. Many times it worked out, and it also earned Rivera a catchy nickname that he embraced.
It will be interesting to see if Rivera goes for it on fourth down any against his old team Sunday. Although he will try hard to keep the emotion out of this game, I would bet some of that is a facade.
For just like a lot of people do around the holidays, Rivera is about to see the old and the new in his life collide.
