Carolina Panthers season is officially over... now what?

Eddie Panero. Hero. He's the new hero. Man, Zane Gonzalez goes down for the year. Eddie Panero is the hero for the Panthers. I think it probably deserves exploring whether or not Steve Wilks either will be or should be the head coach.

And I am curious. I know I said we were going to go through the six playoff games. We're going to have plenty of time for that. But let me just throw this, let me just throw the phone numbers out there.

919-860-5326. If you're a Panthers fan, do you want Steve Wilks to be your head coach? Because I do think it's fair if you don't. It probably means that you only looked at him as an interim in the beginning and they didn't make the playoffs. And the truth is, is that they did have an 11 point lead in the fourth quarter at Tampa against a really not good football team. I realize Tom Brady is their quarterback and you can always get beat. And you were not a great football team either.

But you did have an 11 point lead in the fourth quarter and Tampa scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. But are you in favor of Steve Wilks being the head coach and not being the interim head coach? And I have told you why I believe he's the right man for this job.

And it really speaks to two things. One, head coaching is first and foremost, number one is about leadership. It is rare when a head coach that does not command the respect of the personal respect of his locker room, it's rare where that coach is successful. And I think that there are a lot of really, really smart people who were not great head coaches because they were not great leaders.

And this is going to sound like a slight, but I don't mean it to be that way. And I will use the name Mark Trestman here. Trestman, who was at one point, among all of his other jobs, he had the offensive coordinator at NC State. And he was the offensive coordinator at NC State. Mark Trestman, a brilliant offensive coach. Mark Trestman could be on my coaching staff if I were head coach any day. But as a head coach, there was something lost in the transition from being the offensive guy to the head coach and then commanding the room. You might say the same thing about Adam Gaines, who was a failed head coach at two spots in the division, same division, Miami, and then the Jets. Most people look at Adam Gaines as a really smart offensive mind, but it could not translate as a head coach. Steve Wilks is a very good defensive coach.

I don't think there's any difference. But Steve Wilks is a great leader. And once you have that taken care of, then it's all about building out a coaching staff that matches with your personality or has enough of a contrast to bring out maybe some of your own personal deficiencies as a coach, whether it's strategy or good cop, bad cop, things like that. But I think Wilks is perfect in terms of a leader. And then the other part of this, and I think it matters, and again, I could be completely snowed by the fact that I cover the Carolina Hurricanes and I see what it meant to them, having a head coach who cares about the place. And I think Steve Wilks cares.

He's an app guy, but he's a Charlotte guy. He cares about the city. He cares about the franchise. It's I'm not saying it's not a job.

It is a job. And Steve Wilks would go elsewhere and be a head coach. It's not like that because I don't think we're at Brind'Amour. I'm almost positive Rod Brind'Amour wasn't interested in being a head coach anywhere else. Yeah, I think if Rod wasn't the Hurricanes coach, he would have just coached his kids and that would have been enough for him. He would have been involved in the sport in some way, but I think he would have gotten out of coaching the sport anyway.

If Wilks, I think Wilks would. He was sort of transfer that level of care onto everybody else, and I think you saw that with the Panthers over the, what was it, 13 weeks that he was the head coach. Yeah, six and six record. They had some great performances. They had some bad performances. Their game at the Rams. The Rams haven't looked that good since. Yeah.

Right? They just haven't looked that good since. But they've also, I mean, they were the only team in the last two months to beat Detroit.

Yeah. And I mean, given what he was working with too, like he didn't have, that wasn't the roster he built, but also he got rid of some people and they got rid of coaches. He got rid of Robbie Anderson, but that wasn't a loss. I mean, I'm not knocking Robbie, you know, not trying to rip Robbie, but he was not playing well and he was a bit of a headache for the coaching staff.

So that was addition by subtraction. But the roster, we talked about it all year long. The roster isn't that good.

The fact that they finished the season seven and 10 is like, wow, incredible. They finished seven and 10 with that roster? In the beginning of the year, given health, given Baker Mayfield being good, given Christian McCaffrey playing a full season and maybe somebody emerging as a second wide receiver, we thought, well, eight wins is probably the ceiling. Well, Baker Mayfield wasn't good. Christian McCaffrey was traded.

Nobody ever established themselves as a number two receiver. They didn't have a pass catching tight end. The defense was a little wishy washy sometimes. Right. The defense was, for the most part, very good. Right. And in the second half yesterday, the defense was excellent.

Yes. Wasn't so good in the first half. But that still doesn't sound like seven and 10.

It sounds like five and 12 to me. I just thought that Wilkes did a very good job in a very difficult spot. And he's such a solid guy that I'd love to see him get another crack at being a head coach. I don't know what David, you can't get inside David Tepper's head because, I mean, he's hired one coach and he went shiny object and he went quickly to shiny object because he knew that other people were coming after Matt Ruhl. That's how you gave Matt Ruhl seven years.

Exactly. And I don't know what Matt Ruhl got to go to Nebraska, but the years were taken care of. But the overall value of the contract, I don't know. I don't know if David Tepper is still paying Matt Ruhl. It probably shouldn't matter to David Tepper because it isn't more than one or two million dollars a year if he is. But I don't think that'll impact who he goes after next. But he's already met with Jim Harbaugh. I don't know who else he would be, who he would have interest in. But I hope that Steve Wilks is the head coach because I think, A, he deserves it and I think he would be a really good fit for them. And in a way, he could be their version of Dan Campbell. Yeah.

In that it's more important to be able to connect than it is to have this. He's the anti-Mike McDaniel. Now, I think Mike's done a very good job in Miami. I'm not knocking him. But to me, he is the cerebral, the game planner coach. Right?

The exit. He's bringing the heart that was missing in the locker room. Right. I totally think that they were playing for him at some of those wins that they got. Oh, and for Wilks.

Oh, no question. Panthers were absolutely doing that for him. That was what last night was all about. And each other, too. But what Wilks had the ability to do, I believe, was get them to play for each other because they all, as it turns out, they did have a chance to make the playoffs. But that is also about doing it for each other. And I mean, the most impressive thing about the Lions win at Lambeau Field last night was that it seemed like Detroit, even without anything to play for, had everything to play for. And that speaks to the culture. And that's the first step into becoming a winning franchise is to is establishing a culture. So I think Wilks did that and hope he gets the gig.