Panthers announce firing of head coach Rhule
Matt Rhule was fired as head coach of the Carolina Panthers less than six months after owner David Tepper signaled it could take five, perhaps six years, to rebuild an organization capable of maintaining excellence.
Rhule’s firing Monday comes less than 24 hours after the 37-15 loss to the San Francisco 49ers and before three years of his seven-season, $62 million contract he received in January 2020 to transform the Panthers the way he did with collegiate programs at Temple and Baylor.
He was fired with an 11-27 record, including his 1-4 start this season.
Defensive air game coordinator Steve Wilks, who led the Arizona Cardinals in 2018, was named interim head coach.
Rhule’s firing comes after Tepper said in late April, “I believe in Matt. He has my full support.”
“I’m an amateur,” Tepper stated that day. “I don’t like to lose. But it takes time and it takes a foundation, it takes time to build the foundation to win. I think Coach Rhule and [general manager] Scott [Fitterer] have done a great job of creating that foundation.”
What Rhule, 47, never found was a quarterback capable of sustaining success.
He inherited Cam Newton, who was cut in March 2020 while rehabbing from foot surgery and a shoulder problem that made him a shadow of the player who won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award in 2015.
The Panthers acquired Teddy Bridgewater, who was cut one season after giving him a three-year, $63 million contract. They then made a trade with the New York Jets for 2018 third overall draft pick Sam Darnold, who had had a 13-25 record as a starter in New York.
Carolina brought back Newton during the 2021 campaign when Darnold suffered a shoulder injury, only to see the first overall pick in the 2011 draft accumulate an 0-5 record.
Rhule and Fitterer made a strong attempt to make a trade with the Houston Texans for Deshaun Watson this offseason despite the quarterback having 22 civil lawsuits against him for sexual misconduct and sexual assault.
When Watson chose the Cleveland Browns, making Baker Mayfield expendable, the Panthers began pursuing the first overall pick in the 2018 draft. That trade finally happened in July.
Mayfield never regained the form he had in 2020, when he led the Browns to an 11-5 record and one playoff win, posting career-worst numbers in nearly every statistic.
“That’s the most important position on the field,” Tepper expressed after the team parted ways with Newton. “Unless you have that guy that gets you to the playoffs and Super Bowls, you have to keep re-evaluating because the only thing that matters is Super Bowls.
“And until you get that guy, you’re evaluating, evaluating, evaluating every year.”
Rhule felt the overall squad was good enough to win this season if he got something good out of Mayfield. That never happened and Tepper decided this Monday to make a change.
