Are people ready to fire Frank Reich?

Tough start to the Panthers preseason. They get beat by the Jets 27-0, and I believe the the Wolves are out already. The Wolves are out for the Cats. Fans are going nuts. Frank Reich, I thought we were going to change things. I have some theories as to why there is some angst.

They'll get to that in a little bit. Will Brinson, who we talked to on Mondays here during the NFL season, I thought since apparently some people are treating 27-0 loss to the Jets as somehow carrying some meaning, I thought we would pretend that it's a, that it matters. So, is Frank Reich on the hot seat, Will? Yeah, fire him right now.

Why is he still the coach? I'd like to remind you that the Chiefs lost 1914 to the Bears last year in week one of the regular season. The Chiefs would end up having the 32nd overall pick in the NFL draft because they won the Super Bowl and the Bears would end up having the first overall pick until they traded it to Carolina because they were the worst team in football. So, before we go and make, I mean, and look, like, I think it is, the preseason is a warm-up for the regular season, right? It's nothing. It means nothing. It means nothing.

There's some stuff that means things, but like, by and large, it does mean nothing. I mean, I like to constantly say, let's settle down and not make rash, you know, let's not jump to rash conclusions based on one game, a small sample size, and then I like to do exactly that, right? And then I get on Monday with you at, like, you know, 12 o'clock or whatever it is and yell about how the, you know, week one of the Panthers regular season is a complete disaster.

You know, this seems a disaster. I think a couple things should be true with the Panthers. One, the offensive line could be problematic.

Yeah, that was the issue for me just with the first handful of series, right? Yes, Icky Ikhwanu completely misdiagnosed or misrecognized a stunt from the Jets and he got blown by Bryce Young, got popped on, I believe, his first pass. It was a completion of Adam Thielen for eight yards. You saw him actually, Icky was clearly, he's like, oh my god, I am so sorry, buddy, because you saw Bryce Young pop on the helmet that I don't sweat it, dude. And then Icky also got beat and I don't like to talk bad about Icky because he's a state guy and I think he's a really, really good run blocker. He's gonna have to improve just pass pro. Got beat low by Bryce Huff on some secret play.

He didn't actually, I think Jermaine Johnson was the one who got to Bryce Young on that. The other thing can be true that the Jets have a top five pass rush. And the Panthers might just have like an average to below average offensive line right now. Not everybody's healthy, not everybody's cohesive. Defensive lines, so if you think about, you know, we always talk about like, defensive lines are going to be ahead of the offensive lines in the preseason. Yeah, especially if they stunt and you're playing against.

Right, exactly. And the Jets are being aggressive. The Jets were also playing their second preseason game. They have an entire games worth of reps more than the Panthers do in terms of actual game action. Offensive line, if something is going to show up in the preseason as a problem for almost every NFL team, it is the offensive line. It shows up all over the league because one, you require a lot of consistency with the offensive line to produce positive results and two, you require a lot of reps to get that consistency. And they just don't seem to have a lot of reps because we're early in the season. So I thought that Bryce Young looked like he belonged, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. But that the offensive line is a problem.

I think the weapons like Adam Thielen and Hayden Hurst are nice enough underneath DJ Shark too. Like the Panthers can be good if the offensive line is good. If the offensive line stinks, the Panthers are going to be a 500 team maybe. Yeah, I mean, they might be a 500 team either way.

Sure. I mean, 9 and 8 probably, I think 9 and 8 will win the division. I mean, that's just the way I think 9 and 8 will win the NFC South this year. I mean, if you win 10, if you win 10 games, I think you're resting your starters in the final week of the regular season.

I really do. I don't know about that, but it's entirely possible you're not wrong. I don't know if anybody's good. The NFC South is like for the exact opposite reason of the AFC North. And they are the actual exact opposites. The AFC North is impossible to pick because you don't know which team is going to be the best because they're all really good. Except for the Browns.

The NFC South, except for who? The Browns. Oh, Browns can be really good. Browns can be a decent roster. Browns can be better than we think, but I'm not high on them either. The NFC South is impossible to pick because you don't know which bad team is going to be the best. And I do think that we'll see these teams kind of glom together around 500, where it's like last place could be 7 and 10 and first place is 10 and 7. Yeah. And I mean, I think ultimately I think 9 and 8 will win the division thanks to a tiebreaker.

That's the way I think. I'm not going to take week one of the pre-season and look at how Derek Carr looked in his first drive against the Chiefs questionable defense. And he looked really good. They looked really good. The Saints look really good. And how the Panthers looked in their entire game and they looked really bad. And Matt Corral, woof.

Also no time back there. I'm not going to change my, like if I'm picking the Panthers to be in first and the Saints to be in last, I'm not going to flip that based on week one of the pre-season. That's a bad overreaction.

All right. Let me ask you about, I don't, I don't know if this is an overreaction or not, but a few years ago, Will Brinson is joining us here from cbssports.com. That Will Brinson, also the pick six podcast. Back when Ron Rivera was hired by Washington during the Dan Snyder era, I thought that it was the perfect hire for an organization that simply needed an adult. And that's what Ron Rivera is. Solid human being, good coach, not a great coach, but a good coach, a conservative coach, but a good one. Um, that that's exactly what they needed. Defensive Mike McCarthy.

A perfect, a perfect example. So this off season, they try to get more dynamic offensively. They hire Eric B enemy as the offensive coordinator. And all of a sudden they're answering questions now about, Oh man, is he running his team? Is he working his team too hard? And Rivera doesn't say, no, it's pro football.

We're, we're a month away from the start of the season. Why does anybody care about this? He basically threw the enemy under the bus by saying, yeah, it's something we're going to have to talk about. Uh, players have complained. It's too complicated.

What are we doing? Yeah. So, um, they, uh, commanders and I mean, I really hope they change that name.

Um, well, the vibes are the way the kids say these days, the vibes are immaculate. Um, aside from if they say something like that, I don't really know. I have no idea. Um, did they say bombed the bomb.com? Do they still say that? I have no idea, but I'll find out today when I picked my son up. Yeah. Ask him about the bomb. If that's still cool to kids.

Um, my son routinely calls me a nerd and says that it says various things about me that are mean related. And at any rate, um, I think that because of the sale to Josh Harris, you really see a difference in this team. Um, and like, I think that you're going to see a very optimistic and enthusiastic fan base show up for week one and show up throughout the preseason. Um, now the Ron Rivera thing is really interesting because he is as far as I know, Adam, the only coach in the NFL to oversee the transition of an ownership sale through multiple scandals. Yes.

I've never seen this before. Ron Rivera's the guy you want transitioning. I mean, at the end of the day, this season, Ron Rivera knows that this season is an audition for his new boss, Josh Harris, who is going to probably come in and completely clean house because that's what owners eventually do when they take over football teams. Um, I thought he did a pretty good job of walking it back.

He compared the enemy to Jack Del Rio and he was like, they all have different styles, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, look like you just can't, it was just a bad move. And I think he's just maybe feeling a lot of pressure.

Uh, and subsequently walked it back. I think Washington has a chance to be better than people expect. Their defense could be really, really good.

And I'm, I like Sam Howell. Like I think, I think Sam has a chance to be a player in this league. And if, if they can protect for him and these weapons kind of develop and he plays well, then Washington could be a problem.

Right? No, I, I think they do have good personnel and especially on the defensive side of the ball, they could be good. And they've got game breaking. They have some game breaking players on the offensive side as well. Stuff that the Panthers don't have.

It seems like Washington has right to have a little bit of that element. Um, but. I mean, Terry McLaurin's a, maybe the most underrated receiver in the NFL. He's a star. He goes for a thousand yards every year.

He doesn't care who the quarterback is. And now he's got a guy that he likes and Sam Howell who can be aggressive down the field and, um, and is willing to force balls into tighter windows. But I know you say that Ron Rivera did a good job of walking it back, but man, you shouldn't have had to walk it back. So one of my, you can interpret it. Interpret what I can't even speak English.

You can interpret what Ron Rivera said in one of two ways. One, he agrees that Eric Bienemy is working his team too hard, which I can't even fathom. Or he's basically saying that my team isn't very smart. My offense isn't very smart in terms of the personnel.

I mean, these are the only ways to say, to, to apologize for that. So the Bienemy thing is really interesting because, and we talked to JP Finley for our all 32 series, um, on, on, on the commanders, like, you know, Bienemy is like, everybody's like, you should get a head coaching job. And everybody's kind of treating this as he wanted to go to Washington to get out from under 80 Reed. So he could prove that he deserves a head coaching job, except he didn't really have any other offers to be an offensive coordinator. And it was just sort of time to move on in Kansas City. Now you're not going to get anybody in Kansas City to say anything bad about him. I think he's got two Super Bowl rings, right? There's some historical off the field stuff that certainly pops up during these interviews, I believe, um, that kind of largely gets unmentioned by, in the media. Um, I just sort of wonder if this isn't more of a forced marriage for Rivera with Bienemy, then maybe it's being given credit for because he didn't have to hire him.

Right. I did not. I mean, I mean, I did. He, I mean, was it a, did the league tell him he had to, no, I just wonder if like, you know, there was some, uh, you know, edict from they, they, there was a, there was a clear call to change the offense because he fired Scott Turner and needed to go get somebody else. I mean, I, I don't, I'm not saying that he was told us hire, hire Eric Bienemy. I'm just saying like when Eric Bienemy became a candidate for that job, you sort of wonder if his bosses didn't say, that's the guy that we want to hire to bring in and run some kind of Andy Reid system. Um, and he's clearly not running the stick.

He's not, he's not, he is not a Ron Rivera type of practice guy. And I don't, I don't think it's that big a deal. Like it's just a weird, it's a weird dynamic. It is a bit of a red flag. I thought that was a complete turnover by the head coach, uh, in Washington and it's, it's hard to walk that.

It's hard to walk that back until we see, uh, what the team looks like, uh, when the, when we get to the opener. All right. Well, Brinson, uh, we, uh, we talked about the two, basically the two locals, uh, and we will talk again maybe next week. Uh, and I appreciate your time as always.

Will Brinson here on the Adam gold show. Here's a summer travel tip pack, just one pair of shoes that goes with every outfit. Like the versatile, perfectly packable tree shoes from Allbirds from the go anywhere tree runners to the sporty tree dashers too, to the classic low top tree pipers. Allbirds has a pair of shoes for every style. The best part is they're all crafted with lightweight breathable eucalyptus fiber that takes comfy to the next level. Step into summer travel with the perfect travel shoes from Allbirds. Find your pair at allbirds.com that's a L L B I R D S.com.