Where do the Carolina Panthers go from here?

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That's piperlou.com. Will Brinson, senior NFL writer, CBSSports.com, Pick 6 podcast moderator joining us on the Adam Gold Show. Did you have you already done your emergency Pick 6 podcast for Frank Reich's ouster?

Oh, yeah. We cranked that out this morning. Reich was fired. I think Tom Pellicera reported it first, like 8 o'clock. Oh, was it 8 o'clock? First I saw it was pretty early.

First I heard about it was 9.45. I was feverishly preparing for a meeting. I think, weren't you tagged? Didn't I text you? You were like, did 12.20 good? I was like, we got something to talk about. You were like, oh! No, I knew at that point. At that point I knew. Yeah, I mean, and I actually already banged out the Panthers have a David Tepper problem column for CBSSports.com. It is the problem, isn't it? Check that out there. You know what's funny, Gold, is I wrote that column Thursday night after the Bears Panthers game a couple weeks ago.

And like, no, I didn't really have to change a whole lot. Like I just had to add like Frank Reich got fired at the top of it because the Panthers have had a David Tepper problem. I think it's going to become more obvious to everyone who's sort of watching from a 30,000 foot viewpoint. Because, you know, when you think about the Panthers and since David Tepper took over, he's going to be hiring his seventh coach. If you count interims. Since he took over, he bought the team in July of 2018.

He was finalized. Now, he gave Ron Rivera a year and then fired in mid-season at five and seven. Say whatever you want about Ron Rivera. I think the guy probably deserved to get to the end of the year to see what he could do, especially at five and seven. I have forgotten that he fired Ron Rivera midstream, that he didn't let Rivera get to the end of the season. Right. But I'm saying like, so I'm saying like in, in taking the singularity of it, like, okay, Ron Rivera, he'd been, it was probably time for Ron to move on.

It was, that's fine. But so this is three times he's done it. I know, but I'm saying you take it from the Ron Rivera, you take it from the Ron Rivera when you're like, all right, that's fine too. And then like now he hires Matt Ruhl and he fires Matt Ruhl to five games into the third season. Now, again, taken in the context of just Matt Ruhl, you're like, yeah, you should have fired him. But then he hires Frank Reich and 11 games into his career as a Panthers coach. The guy who threw the first touchdown pass and the first pass attempt for the Carolina Panthers franchise back in 95 gets canned 11 games into his career. Urban Meyer got two more games than Frank Reich did. Now you could say you're one in 10, we're going to fire you.

And in the singular context of that, it's okay, I guess. But one is the fastest that the coach has been fired. The first year coach has been fired. 45 years. 45 years.

Yes. Even again, Urban Meyer got 13 games. Two, when you take into account that David Tepper is now, every coach that he's inherited or hired, he has fired mid-season. 12 games, five games, 11 games.

This guy is an impetuous tyrant who cannot handle losing. And then you start to look at the quarterbacks. Trade for Sam Darnold. You cut Cam Newton, you let Matt Ruhl take a crap on Cam Newton. Which, again, Cam was at the end of his rope, but you maybe read the room a little bit on the franchise.

You're a big deal. It doesn't work after one year. So you panic and trade a second round pick for Sam Darnold. That doesn't work out. You trade for Baker Mayfield and you trade a bunch of assets for Matt Corral.

That doesn't work out. One year later, let's trade everything for Bryce Young. There are two clear and distinct patterns here. And both of them involve David Tepper's fingerprints all over the coaching searches, all over the quarterback searches. And they're very clearly impatient and a complete lack of willingness to sit back and let the game come to you. And as a result, the Panthers now have maybe a quarterback, maybe not.

I don't think anybody knows. I mean, if I'm Bryce Young, I'm not sure if I'm a good quarterback either. They don't have a coach. They don't have a 2024 first round pick.

And they are going to be wandering around the desert for the foreseeable future as the new Browns. Until David Tepper takes a step back and hires some football people and let them do football things. And there's no way in hell he's going to do that because he's going to fire Scott Fitterer and blame the roster on him.

Probably. He's going to hire a new GM and make the GM do other stuff. And then hire a new coach and make the coach do the stuff that he wants to. It is a David Tepper problem in Carolina. There is no question he is the number one problem. The problem with this year's team is the personnel. And then the third problem, if I was ranking the problems, David Tepper is the biggest problem. This year's team, the problem was personnel. Then after that, it was the coaching wasn't good. I frankly, I would have stayed with Frank Reich. First of all, I would have hired, I would have let Steve Wilks remain the head coach because he earned the job. And that would have spoken highly of David Tepper, which I guess there's no real reason to do that. But he earned the job.

They went six and six. And maybe Tepper was mad because he screwed up the draft pick where they ended up picking ninth as opposed to a lot earlier in the draft because they were one and four. But if he was thinking that far ahead, he probably should have just let Matt Ruhl coach it out where Ruhl would have gotten to like, maybe they would have won three times and they would have had a higher first round pick and they wouldn't have had to trade so much to get up in the draft. They could have just taken the third quarterback available to them, which frankly, we're probably you'd roll the dice and just say, all right, this is our guy. Maybe you would have gotten Bryce Young anyway. Better off just taking Will Levison in the second round. Dude, anything would have been better than what they did. Well, no, yes, because it's not a bet.

I've said this thousands of times now. It's not about Bryce Young. It's about what they had to do to get Bryce Young.

And that's where I get back to this. Will Brinson, who joins us every Monday here, CBS Sports dot com, pick six podcast. To me, somebody in that room, whether it's Frank Reich or Scott Fitterer or Nicole Tepper, somebody in that room should have said to David Tepper that this is not the draft to trade up from nine to one. This is the draft to just continue to build your team. And next year, drop the quarterback in it. This is the draft to do that this upcoming year when you've got Caleb Williams and Drake May both in the draft. If you have to trade up in that draft, that's the draft you trade up for. Not this one. Somebody should have been in that room smart enough unless everybody was on board with this.

And frankly, I don't know. I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but this would have been the better draft to do that because I think both of these. I know what C.J. Stroud has done.

I'm not necessarily buying that C.J. Stroud is some transcending quarterback. I don't even know if the two quarterbacks in this draft are the transcending quarterback. Drake May needs to beat a good defense first.

I'm with you. I think Drake May has a lot of questions to answer. I think Caleb Williams is a much better quarterback prospect than Drake May.

I don't know who else does. Rick Spielman, who does that podcast with Ryan Wilson, and he thinks he's the best prospect basically since luck to come into the NFL. And look, by the way, you talk about teams that trade up to get quarterbacks. The Colts turned down the Browns' entire draft class in exchange for the number one overall pick that year in 2012. Luck retired.

Whatever you want to say, it worked out well. With Trent Richardson and Brandon Wheaton, the Chiefs traded up Patrick Mahomes and they traded to 10. They traded with the Bills. They traded a future first round pick. They traded up to 10 and gave away a future first round pick knowing because they had a good infrastructure. They had a good teammate, Alex Smith. They had Andy Reid. They weren't going to be giving away the number one overall pick. The Bills traded up to number seven and gave up a future first round pick knowing that even if Josh Allen struggled as a rookie, they weren't going to be giving up a number one overall pick. The Panthers traded from nine to one. Now, granted, I think the Panthers should be a better team.

Maybe they'll win a couple games, stumble into a couple games with a dead cat bounce here. But they've scored more than 14 points four times this season. And those were won in a garbage time Monday night touchdown against the Saints. It actually kind of made it a three-point game. And then the other three times were in blowouts where they were getting destroyed. One was an Andy Dalton start, too. And then the other two were blowout games where they were getting destroyed.

They put up late points against the Dolphins and the Cowboys, I think. I mean, this is a bad, bad football team. And David Tepper is going to blame everyone else around him. This is what NFL owners who love to meddle do.

He's meddling, but he's not publicly meddling. Except it's becoming more and more clear when you fire your third coach since you ball the team in 2018. The Panthers had four coaches from 1995 to 2017. They've been higher seven, number seven.

Lucky number seven. Unbelievable. I mean, David Tepper is not even close to being as good an owner as Jerry Jones.

Not even in the same galaxy at this point. The cop is Jimmy Haslam, who is a minority Steelers owner, took over the Browns. And it was like, everyone's like, oh, this guy was with this. I was reading back on the Matt Ruhl when Matt Ruhl was hired. David Tepper compared him to Chuck Knoll. And then also said he dresses like bleep and he sweats a lot. So I like it. Well, it's close.

There's both is an L sound in both names. So I can certainly understand why you would do the issue. The issue is that you have this. Like what's not being mentioned in all of these failures, like the Frank Reich failure in the maybe the Bryce Young failure, the Darnold, the Mayfield, the Matt Corral, the Matt Ruhl. All this stuff is that in between all of these failed attempts, these little whiffs were these big whiffs. Like they tried to get Matthew Stafford. He was like, no.

They tried it. Carson Wentz said no. Carson Wentz was like, I don't want to be traded there. And Carson Wentz is not on a roster, correct? He's currently in the Rams, I believe.

Oh, is he on the Rams? I don't know how I missed that. All right. So next.

That's fair. Next for the Panthers, the odds are out. Ben Johnson, the offensive coordinator for the Lions, who's who preemptively already said ain't interested.

They go back to taking an OC job instead of taking the head coaching job with the Panthers. See, I understand doing that, knowing that there would be offers the next year. Right. I know.

So it helps to raise your level. He's still employed. And Frank Reich isn't. So good night, Ben.

But who who has the better severance package right now? Come on. I mean, Frank. Right, dude.

Frank. Right. Didn't even make it to the end of Matt rules contract, much less his own.

Unbelievable. Well, rule got a seven year deal. I mean, Lou Lou Holtz only made it 13 games also as the coach of the Jets back in 1976. So Ben Johnson is the is the betting favorite, but he's already turned the job down before it was even available. Jim Caldwell is next. My guess is that if Caldwell was going to get the job, he would have just gotten the interim job.

But he's not right. So you have to go down to Chris Tabor at Caldwell. Caldwell would make sense only in the fact that if the offense performed better as he's he is now the senior offensive assistant senior analyst to offensive coordinator Thomas Brown. If he were to the office would go, well, maybe he gets credit. And maybe more importantly, there's no one else who wants this job.

Right. There's no one else who wants this job where if you don't win in the first, if you lose a lot in the first 11 games, you go home. He's fired three coaches mid-season. So is your Evaro and Thomas Brown, Evaro was plus seven hundred or seven to one.

Brown was twelve to one. Neither are the interim, probably because they both went, yeah, no, I don't want to be the interim. Let's let somebody else be the interim.

I mean, I'm being serious here when I say this. I think that now I do wonder if like David Tepper will hesitate to go back to the college ranks because of how poorly Matt Ruhle went. But like Jim Harbaugh and Dabo Sweeney would have viable reasons for taking huge piles of cash to potentially leave their situations. Harbaugh, two suspensions, probably sick of the NCAA. Dabo has been mouthing off towards Clemson fans all year. It's very disappointing that this Frank Wright firing is taking away from all the minutes that I could have devoted towards pointing out that NC State absolutely walloped Carolina this week. Oh, we're going to get to it later on. I promise.

OK, you will definitely get to it. Two things. One, Jim Harbaugh is a pro coach, not a college coach, happens to coach college team right now, which is to me like Pete Carroll. Pete Carroll wasn't a college coach. He was actually a pro coach in college at USC. And I don't mean that he was a college pro style coach. He was a pro coach in college, which is why he left USC as a bigger like cash spin per year than like the Jaguars. He was always a pro coach. Jim Harbaugh is a pro coach and he just happens to be coaching at Michigan now. And frankly, I don't know how to read where he's headed, but I will say this. The Panthers would have to be well down the list for Harbaugh on Harbaugh's interest ladder. Like he would probably be way interested in staying at Michigan in the wake of five years of sanctions before he would come to the Panthers.

I think one of the things that's important about who's next to is if I'm if I'm taking the Panthers job, I want one like a long term deal with a lot of cash, unless I'm some up and comer who thinks that matter is still going to get fired, probably. Right. But you have to really love Bryce Jones or you have to have the cachet to demand that you are in charge of personnel, because you clearly like like if Scott like Scott Fitter is buying the groceries for Frank, right.

But David Tepper is the one with the credit card at the grocery store. Right. Right. Pick it out. Like it's like smushed up avocados like hair, go make me some guacamole. It's like that's brown. David, why do we do this?

Why are we buying the brown bananas? He has seven lines and like a thing of asparagus is like, make me a steak. It's like, what? What are you talking about? So why are you covered in red wine, David? God dang it again.

I mean, I'm intrigued by this. Will Brinson is here a couple of minutes. Washington's probably going to be available. The Chargers job is going to be available. We know the Raiders job is available. It's possible that the Jets job, maybe even the Patriots job will be available. Is Eric B enemy on anybody's radar other than Washington? I can't, I mean, we talked about the enemy on the, on the emergency pod in terms of candidates, but like, I mean, do you really take the guy who like, same house trick, trick, like trending towards being the most sack quarterback in NFL history.

That's that's, that's the engineer that offensive engineers who Bryce young needs. How about this? How about you?

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See website for details. 2024 second round pick, which is going to be like basically a 2024 first round pick. Yeah. Call Robert Kraft. And you offer Bob crafts a 2020 force your your first pick the first pick of the second round this year to take bill Belicheck off the scene. Why would Belicheck agree to that? Because he would get total run of the place. And if he likes Bryce younger as a prospect, he might be interesting.

He thinks he can coach up the offensive line and you get enough pieces on defense where you can make some noise. I wouldn't I wouldn't do anything that would cost me a draft pick. What about somebody who does have a track record in the state of North Carolina?

Could you join? Well, yes. Could you get Lincoln Riley from USC? Oh, I would not hire Dabo Sweeney, by the way. Because I think Dabo was like the OC in Greenville for the couple of years.

Yeah, it was. I think I think I think Dave Doran dangers have floated his name out there. So we get some Savage Wolves money.

Shout out Savage Wolves, a pack of wolves. Craig crank that and I'll up baby. I know I mean, I think that I think I think I think the problem with both Dabo and Lincoln Riley is you've already tried. So I think he's gonna end up he went through with veteran offensive coach.

Think about how think about the hell this time. This guy's like, how is he so rich? You can picture how this tiny little brain is working for David Tepper. He has already tried to hire the college, the hot college coach, it bombed miserably. He tried to hire the veteran offensive guy.

It bombed miserably. I bet his next target is Mike McDonald of the Ravens, young, defensive minded head coach. But he says he wants an offensive coach.

Who knows? I mean, the fight tried that didn't work. I mean, look, I gotta be hard to get somebody to work for David. He's gonna have to try to settle on Dan Quinn and Dan Quinn probably leaving the Cowboys job. I wouldn't leave the Cowboys job for that. I'm gonna I wouldn't if you're Dan Quinn, but I believe I believe my job to be the Panthers coach. But like, I don't think any other coaches should do that.

Would you hire me as your offensive coordinator? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's I don't know. I mean, I have to run it. I have to run it by the first. All right.

Exactly. That's Will Brinson pick six podcast, the emergency David Tepper fired Frank Reich podcast is available. Thank you very much, sir. Talk to you next week. Yeah, buddy. See you, man. Bye bye. Then Judy discovered Chumba casino.com. It's my little escape. Now Judy's the life of the party. Oh, baby mama's bringing home the bacon.

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