Carolina Panthers shouldn’t fire Matt Rhule, no matter how bad it looks. Hear me out
As the Carolina Panthers started falling down another cliff Sunday, the chant from one pocket of the stadium was clear enough to be heard inside the glassed-in press box at Bank of America Stadium.
“Fire Rhule! Fire Rhule!”
So should Carolina owner Dave Tepper do that, getting rid of head coach Matt Rhule after two seasons and starting over yet again?
The popular answer — especially after Carolina limped to a 32-6 loss to Tampa Bay on Sunday to lose its sixth consecutive home game — would be yes.
The correct answer is “No.”
I understand you’re angry, Panther fans.
I understand that Rhule is 10-21 in nearly two full seasons as the head coach and this team, once 3-0, is now 5-10. I understand you’re sick of hearing about Rhule’s “process” and the Panther “brand” and then watching the team get hammered yet again.
But although it will be an unpopular opinion, I don’t think Rhule should be fired today, nor in one week, nor in one month. The right thing to do is to let him have one more season to get this right.
And if the third time still isn’t the charm, then, fire him.
Firing Rhule would feel good in the short term, in the same way that screaming at someone who cut you off at an intersection makes you feel good in the short term. But it usually doesn’t help anything.
The truth is that firing Rhule at this moment is short-sighted. Tepper gave Rhule a seven-year contract, told him Rome wasn’t built in a day and said he had free rein to start over. Rhule has done that, rebuilding the team from the ground up, and the Panthers’ defense is markedly better.
Said Rhule of his fabled process Sunday: “We have some key areas that we have to fix. … But I believe it’s 1,000% working. I just know no one can see it, and I apologize.”
What Rhule and the Panthers haven’t solved is the quarterback position and the offensive line problem. And, to be clear, that’s on Rhule and the team’s front office. Carolina has played three quarterbacks this season. The Panthers allowed seven QB sacks Sunday. That’s the way you lose games in the NFL.
But to take the long view here:
This feels to me more like Ron Rivera’s second year in Charlotte than anything else. Rivera had two losing seasons to begin his coaching career, and after the second one he was nearly fired by then-owner Jerry Richardson after the 2012 season. Instead, Richardson gave Rivera one more chance, and Rivera and the Panthers responded with three straight NFC South titles.
Rivera had a lot of young Panther players who grew with the team in those years, as Rhule does, and Rivera also got booed at Bank of America Stadium. Rhule and his team got hammered with boos several times Sunday — all of it boiling down to the home team playing poorly. He was asked afterward what he thought about the booing.
“I mean, I come from Philadelphia,” Rhule said. “To me, it shows that you care. … We’re not winning. People are spending their hard-earned money to come watch us play. … I would much prefer passion over apathy.”
Cam Newton heard the boos Sunday as the Panthers dropped to 0-13 in the past 13 games he has quarterbacked for them, dating back to 2018. He didn’t think they were justified.
“Coach Rhule is a great coach,” Newton said. “I heard the boos and the chants and stuff like that. But last time I checked, Coach Rhule wasn’t out there playing.”
Nevertheless, Rhule — who sounded at times in his 18-minute postgame press conference Sunday that he was campaigning for his job — understands this is part of coaching. You’re going to catch heat every time your team starts losing. You’re going to get second-guessed, and in several cases, that’s justified here.
Picking up Sam Darnold’s option for nearly $19 million next season, for instance, was wrong on several levels. Not drafting either a quarterback or an offensive lineman in the first round of the 2021 draft seemed short-sighted, both then and now.
But Rhule and his staff have also improved players they inherited like Donte Jackson and Brian Burns and drafted players like Jeremy Chinn and Derrick Brown. I’m not saying their personnel acquisition has been great overall. I am saying the jury is still out. They haven’t found the right quarterback yet. When and if they do, the rest of it will all look a lot better.
If they don’t? If they swing and miss again on QB in 2022, when Newton is likely gone and Darnold is hopefully a backup who is backing up somebody better than he is?
Then that’s the time to fire Rhule. Three straight years of 5- and 6-win seasons under him would be long enough to decide this process is never going to work.
But I saw that Arizona game, and I saw that 3-0 start, and I saw Burns make his first Pro Bowl and how much better the offense runs whenever Christian McCaffrey is healthy. Feel free to go ahead and blast me, because 27 years of covering Panthers football has given me a thick skin.
I say give Rhule one more season.
This story was originally published December 26, 2021 at 6:58 PM.
