Does David Tepper now have a target on his back?

So who else gets stressed when it comes to looking for the perfect holiday gift? Maybe you need something for the girls gift exchange this year or your office bestie that you spill all the office tea with.

Family, don't forget about those fur babies. They need a gift too. My friends over at Piper Lou, they got you covered and I can spend hours on piperlou.com. They've got the best gifts for this holiday season like the 40 ounce personalized tumblers or where's my Swifties at? How about a Swiftmas Christmas tea? Don't miss the most amazing holiday gifts for everyone. Visit piperlou.com.

That's piperlou.com. Joe Person from The Athletic covers the Carolina Panthers and boy, this has been a year. Before we get to the fact that David Tepper has a target on his back, did you see it spiraling out of control this quickly?

Only in the last couple weeks. It just was about the moment Frank Wright reclaimed offensive play calling. Three games after giving it up, it was like, okay, this is a man who thinks his job's on the line and on the line now and that was right around the time they went to Chicago, I think, and just laid an egg on Thursday night and the offense actually looked worse. Actually, that might have been Thomas Brown's last game. It was Thomas Brown's last game, yeah. It was.

It was when Frank took it, but Frank made the ill-fated decision that night to go for a 59-yard field goal in the cold at Chicago. But then he comes back and he takes it over and the offense looked worse under Frank Wright and David Tepper had just seen enough. He'd seen enough losses. He'd seen enough boring, unproductive offense and he's probably very tired of seeing the quarterback whom he had mortgaged the farm for get thrown to the ground in the turf, you know, seven, eight times a game and so it was time and David Tepper's mind, you know, did they gain much by doing it now? I don't know.

I mean, they were going backwards and if this season was always about Bryce Young's development and when that started to regress, something had to give. Joe Person from The Athletic. At Joe Person. I'm sorry, at Joseph. Very formal on Twitter.

Let's get that right. Very formal. I'm going to wear a tie next time we talk. So now Tepper has become the target everywhere. I mean, I've talked about it for a while. It's not just this year. I think David has involved himself too much in the day-to-day football operations and I've always said it takes a long time to learn how to be an owner, but now he's the target. He doesn't seem to be handling that very well.

No, he's, listen, he, I mean, from that Chicago game I referenced where the Amazon Prime cameras saw him shaking his head in the press box or the owner suite and then last week I'm in Tennessee, he walks out of the visitor's locker room, drops the F bomb. Like, no, this is a man, and I think the whole building started getting tight, you know, as these losses mounted and that stuff started from the top down. David Tepper's press conference, he did, it was very clear to me, his handlers wanted to present kind of a more humble David Tepper who took some responsibility for all this. I saw some of that.

It was in lieu of any real actual information about why he fired Frank Reich, what direction they were going to go, et cetera. But yeah, I mean, listen, he can't help himself. Like, he's that guy that was just wildly successful to the tune of $20 billion in his other business, and he thinks he can, you know, take crappy stocks and turn them into gold here.

And it's apples and oranges. He's got to really, really, this next time around, let the football people do the football stuff. Okay, so that has been, I was listening to the ESPN Morning Show and Chris Canty said he's got to let the football people do football people things, except that how much confidence does David Tepper have that Scott Fitterer, the football guy, that he's going to do the right thing or is capable of rebuilding the roster since three years of draft hasn't really netted a ton? Yeah, I think Scott Fitterer's future is still very much twisting in the wind. Maybe he's survived.

It doesn't feel that way. You know, he wasn't at the press conference the other day, which I thought he seemed noticeable by his absence. The draft, you mentioned he had a terrible free agency with, you know, Adam Thielen's been really the only free agent of who's done anything. Miles Sanders has been really bad. D.J. Shark's been hurt and inconsistent.

Hayden Hurst, really was never given a chance and now he's in the concussion protocol. So, yeah, it's not good. There's not a lot of pelts on the wall that Scott Fitterer can point to. And so, and especially depending on who David Tepper wants to hire. I mean, Jim Harbaugh and or Bill Belichick can have Bill Belichick, someone like that. They're not going to want Scott Fitterer around. They're going to want to do their own personnel stuff.

And I don't know, maybe he survived. I don't necessarily get that feeling, but I don't, you know, I don't have it concrete, obviously, or I would have reported. Joe Person from The Athletic is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. You mentioned Harbaugh. This is not the most attractive job, I guess, that will come open.

We'll talk about the where it may be slots in a minute. But Ben Volan from the Boston Globe, their national NFL writer, said, keep an eye on Bill Belichick. It would have to be a trade situation because I don't think Robert Kraft is going to part with him under contract without some level of compensation, even if I think New England might want to move on from Bill. But can you see Bill Belichick here?

It doesn't feel like a great fit to me. And I know Ben. Ben's a friend and we've known each other a long time.

And, and, you know, Ben's connected. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think Belichick is going to keep his options open. I think he's going to ask around about David Tepper and see if.

Right. And, and frankly, a guy like Belichick might be who David Tepper needs, who's going to tell him, like, no, because there's not a lot. In the six years here, I think Ron Rivera would do it to some degree.

In fact, I know he did. But other than that, there's just not many people who come through here that's been willing to just, you know, speak their mind to David Tepper. And Belichick would. Now, would, would it, would it be a decent marriage, a viable marriage? I don't know. I mean, I think Belichick, as you mentioned, that we're going to get to, he's going to have other offers. Right.

I think, I think. But, you know, Tepper can throw a lot of money at people. That's, I mean, he's, he's paying more for coaches that don't work here anymore than some teams, like the Chargers, betting on coaches who are still under their influence.

It's, it's, it's funny. He's spending more money on ex-coaches than Texas A&M. Joe Person from The Athletic is joining us here. So how much does David Tepper and his, his history, I was going to say recent history, but it's basically less than six years as the owner of the Panthers. How much does his history make it challenging to find the next coach?

I do. There, there are people around Tepper who, who are, have that concern that, you know, it is, is their list going to be truncated because of, of his reputation and his history. And, you know, we'll see. I mean, Ben Johnson, I mean, Ben Johnson, he kind of turned down everyone last year and there were rumbles that he had had a bad interview in Houston and maybe some realization that he wasn't quite ready yet. So he goes back to Detroit.

Tepper really liked Ben Johnson. So, but, but here's another guy who I think is going to have other offers. Right. Will they be as financially lucrative as the Panthers?

Maybe not, but then you start though, considering the idea of like, do I really want to come there? The quarterback, yes, he's a number one pick, but it can't, you know, cause, cause if you know, if you're Ben Johnson and you come here and go three and 14 and four and 13 back, I mean, you might not get another head coach. He's going to be very careful. He's a bright guy. He's got, you know, he's got smart people around him. So I think, I think Tepper might run and run into that, that that's a piece of this too, just this roster and the attractiveness, not just the owner issue, but the roster is the rosters.

I mean, I've, I've had these conversations. I think, I think they should completely tear it down. I would, I would, I would make a list of every asset I had and see what I could get for it. And if I could repair some draft capital, I would do it. And that includes as much as I like Bryce young, that includes considering trading him. If I could recoup some a first round pick and maybe a little bit more, I don't know what the value is for Bryce young on the market, but I have really one more question for Joe person before I let you go. And I know it's crazy for you today, as it should be when something like this happens, the only thing that David Tepper actually answered, I felt at the press conference was that essentially he finally got around to it was that the room was United on Bryce young that they, that everybody wanted Bryce young, David Tepper simply signed off on it.

I don't know if that's a hundred percent accurate or not, but that's the only thing he really did answer in my opinion. My question really is whose decision was it to trade from nine to one to get Bryce young or, or was I'll just leave the question right there. Whose decision was it, was it to trade up? Tepper was ready. I mean, they'd done the, they'd done the quarterback carousel with Bridgewater, Darnold, Mayfield, and they thought it was a deep quarterback class.

And I think they were okay going to one or two. Tepper said that, no thinking about it on my part and what's interesting to me. And so, yes, I think the idea germinated with him and fitter together. What's interesting to me is, but for the Texans owner McNair stepping in and telling Nick that he wasn't comfortable trading all the way up to one. I think that could have worked out to where the Texans draft Bryce young, the Panthers get to take CJ Stroud and keep DJ Moore. And they might still have a, you know, they, they, they wouldn't be given up that maybe they still give up that first round pick this year. But point being is there was some bad luck involved because I think, I think that it's from what I've been told the Titans were, excuse me, Texans were ready to take Bryce young at one, had that three team trade worked out, but it didn't. And here the Panthers are as, you know, of course they're going to have to say they're, they're committed to Bryce young. I mean, and, and, and listen, I have been very hesitant to flush him like so quickly and I'm not because I didn't love the theme for him and I don't love what they've surrounded him with. Would I have liked to seen some more sort of special traits at this point, you know, after 10, 11 games? Yeah, I would.

And I've seen flashes, but not nearly enough to make me convinced, but I'm still, I'm still, you know, holding out some judgment because of those other facts. It's the gift giving season and you're bad at giving gifts. Let Piper Lou help so that people will still love you. Get your bestie a shirt that really captures their personality.

Like my dog and I talk about you. They even have stuff for your coworkers that you don't like, but HR won't let you express how you really feel about them. Get them a 40 ounce tumbler because their skin looks drier than the Sahara desert and have it say, I will put you in a trunk and help people look for you. Whatever you need for the holiday season. Piper Lou has your bag, go to piperloo.com or just Google Piper Lou L O U you're smart. You can figure it out.