hepcat

Too late

I’m sure many of you have watched a lot more videos of David Tepper than I have. Has he ever divulged who (if anyone) his mentors or influences are when he became a new NFL owner? Who does he lean on or confide in for advice and guidance? Tepper was sold to the fans as a “new breed” of owner who was going to do things differently and shake up the NFL world. And he has, to his credit, been true to his word. The contract he gave to Matt Rhule completely reshaped the salary structure for new head coaches given the ridiculous contract Tepper gave Rhule. The problem has been that nothing he has done has made the team better. Nothing. So my question is, if Mr. Tepper insists on continuing to involve himself in the decisions of the team on the field, how is he getting better? What are his resources to improve his own performance? The owner has no one to answer to aside from the fanbase not showing up or paying to see the games. But he’s fortunate that visiting fans are so abundant in Charlotte that the stadium will almost always be full either way. So unfortunately the fans can’t really hold him accountable that way either. If he’s mentioned anyone, literally anyone, who he has a relationship with as a mentor to improve his NFL ownership, I’d be curious to know who it was. Because to me as a fan, if the owner is going to be going out to interview the coaches, and be involved in the decisions of the potential draft picks, and it keeps failing, he’d better show the fanbase how he’s going to get better at his job or get out of the way. Otherwise it’s just insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the results to change.

I agree. If this was year 4 of Matt Rhule or something and Tepper was stubbornly refusing to fire him, I get it. But the team has tried to make changes, all of them have just failed. The biggest failure is David Tepper’s clear inability to translate his success in the stock market to the NFL. It’s just a shame he is too arrogant and proud to step aside.

CJ Stroud is so much better than Bryce it’s not even close. Everyone associated with this franchise should be fired for picking Bryce over him. Massive whiff.

The 2010 team had a good defense. Offense was at least passable with Matt Moore. If the 2023 team played the 2010 team with Dalton vs Moore it might actually be a decent game. 2001 team lost a ton of close games, wasn’t as bad as the record. I think both teams would probably beat the 2023 team.

This will go down as the worst panthers team of all time

I mean you can’t keep Frank Reich around after that series of events to end the game. I have not seen such low IQ, dumb football in my life.

Frank Reich is a hard R word retard

I think both of these teams should fire their coaches

This team is hopeless. Wow

The scheme is just hilariously so bad. Bryce struggles to throw down field accurately but my god the play designs are pure butt

I have bad news for you

Over/Under how long do we hear this same story verbatim about David Tepper regretting he didn’t hire Steve Wilks? I give it until the offseason. https://www.raidersbeat.com/insider-says-raiders-owner-mark-davis-regrets-his-decision-not-to-hire-rich-bisaccia-i-know-for-a-fact

Tepper's biggest fault is his entire career in finance is working against him as a football team owner. The smartest people with the best data aren't always the best football players. Sometimes you win football games just by being bigger and faster than the other team.

Bears defense has allowed the most passing TDs, 2nd most passing yards, 2nd most passing 1st downs, the 3rd highest completion percentage, and the fewest sacks in the NFL. If Bryce stinks it up tonight....yikes.

That video just underscores the lack of direction and identity for the offense. It's like they haven't scouted the opponent at all and are calling the same dozen bad plays at random. It's not a good sign when Ben McAdoo was out scheming this "All Star" coaching staff. Some of the guys on the staff have f*cking Superbowl rings! I agree the scheme has been horrible but I can't pinpoint if the reason is because of Bryce's physical limitations, lack of talent at receiver, or the coaches are just braindead. I'm thinking it's a combo of all of the above. The main problem to me though is that they refuse to commit to the running game and that also relates to the scheme. I heard a stat from the announcer in the Colts game that the Panthers have passed the 4th most times in the NFL. Why are they passing so much? The WRs aren't getting separation, the routes are "static" as O'Sullivan says, but those things open up with the running game. All of these problems compound on each other. I'd like to see a statistic that shows how many play-action passes the Panthers have run in a game and how successful it has been. Have they run the read-option once with Young holding onto the ball? Try some sh*t out until something sticks because when you're the worst team in the NFL, what you're doing isn't working. Too many cooks in the kitchen could be the problem. Tepper obviously heavily involves himself in the day to day operations of the team and we don't really know how involved he is with the actual on-field decisions, but I have a feeling he is. Then you have Reich who is a former OC, Thomas Brown is the OC calling the plays now, they've got Jim Caldwell who was a longtime offensive head coach (god knows what he's doing, haven't heard a peep about him since he was hired). Passing Game Coordinator Parks Frazier called the plays for the Colts after Frank was fired last year. I thought he could be a possible scapegoat for this trainwreck but Reich officiated his wedding so he'd have to be forced to fire him. So there's obviously a lot of opinions in the offensive staff meetings. Bottom line is, it isn't working. They're not changing enough to make it work so it's not going to get better. And the Panthers are going to continue to be very very bad unless big (and successful) changes are made.

Bryce isn't a bust, yet, but he also isn't a good QB. Anyone with eyes could see he was going to struggle to adapt to the NFL given his small stature.

The experiment to see if you can successfully run sports teams like a hedge fund is complete. The conclusion is, no you can't.

The thing about working in football operations is that there is no degree or formal education required to do it. The criteria to work in the industry is largely where you worked previously and who you know. It’s a certified good ol boy network. That is how you end up with wildly unqualified people making ridiculously too much money to be so bad at something. Since Tepper bought the team, the thing that I think the Panthers are sorely missing is the soft skills aspects of building a team. Player evaluation in a vacuum is one thing. Data analysis of a players’s stats, physical metrics, it’s all well and good. But the Panthers seem to have fallen off a cliff at finding the right players to pair with the right coaching staff, and having an identity. It’s well documented among former players that player input got shut down as soon as Tepper bought the team. The closest they came to getting back to that was Wilks. The players genuinely seemed to like playing for him and gave their best. The team had an identity and did it well. It didn’t work every game and Wilks made some mistakes. But what he did with this roster was no short of a miracle. Tepper truly ruined this franchise, and it’s going to take a long time to fix it.

Bears 21 Panthers 10 Bears defense gets 9 sacks, 2 INTs, holds Panthers under 250 total yards and 10 points.

Colts defense was bad until they played Bryce too

That would be a very panthers thing to do. Honestly they should start Dalton just to win the game

You aren’t wrong, they’d probably have won another 2 games

Been asking these same questions since he was a college prospect. As soon as I saw his game against Texas in 2022 I knew he’d struggle in the NFL. He’s bad under pressure and a short QB is not going to be able to see the field well enough to make plays under pressure. It’s playing out exactly like that Texas game every game in the NFL. The only difference is he doesn’t play against team’s that have their starting QB hurt in the 1st quarter every game.