1 year at Florida.
1 year at Blinn College.
1 year at Auburn.
2 years with Chudzinski.
Freeze it there, at the time of the decision, and think about the entirety of Cam's career. His biggest issues at the time were fundamental problems: throwing off of his back foot, overthrowing receivers, etc. The playbook that we were running was good enough for a top-10 offense. Even if we assume that Shula is a bad coach (and I did) who would take the offense back a step or two, what's going to ultimately be more damaging, allowing Cam to run Shula's offense, or forcing him to divert his attention to learning his fifth offense in six years?
Follow-up to that question: What happens if the Panthers hired a new offensive coordinator last year, then Rivera got fired this year and the team cleaned house? Cam's looking at learning his sixth offense in seven years. He'd have been in the league for four years under three offensive coordinators. How is he supposed to focus on learning NFL defenses when he's spending all of his time learning new offenses?
Now, in what looks like Cam's worst season as a pro, the choice is pretty clear. But there's so much to learn about being an NFL quarterback that it would be irresponsible to force a young quarterback to constantly evolve while trying to pick it all up.