Person talked about some of Tepper's recent remarks and what they mean in his latest article for The Athletic.
Excerpts:
The Panthers are on their third head coach since David Tepper bought the team. He’s working with his second general manager and is on to his fifth quarterback, which doesn’t even count the likes of Kyle Allen, Taylor Heinicke, Will Grier or P.J. Walker.
The one constant since 2018 has been Tepper himself, but the hedge fund manager has been making changes to the way he runs his team.
Tepper delivered some of the most interesting comments of the draft weekend when he dropped in on Scott Fitterer and Frank Reich’s news conference Thursday after the Panthers took Alabama quarterback Bryce Young No. 1.
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Tepper, the self-made businessman worth $18.5 billion, acknowledged he was learning on the fly the first couple of years after buying the team from Jerry Richardson. He also emphasized a commitment to overseeing more thorough processes in hiring coaches and selecting quarterbacks, both of which were readily apparent over the past several months.
Tepper was funny, informative and self-effacing, which has not always been his strong suit.
“You guys have to understand, we were here a year and a half trying to figure out — I didn’t know what the heck. I was on the business side,” said Tepper, who was a minority partner of the Steelers. “Then COVID hit. So we’re out of the building for 2 1/2 more years. Then we are in the building and had a better chance last year to see what was going on, right, wrong and indifferent.”
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When the Panthers hired Matt Rhule in 2020, Tepper led a three-person search committee that also included former general manager Marty Hurney and Steven Drummond, a senior adviser to Tepper who recently left the organization. They interviewed four candidates and one had a second interview — Mike McCarthy, with whom Hurney circled back.
During the search for Rhule’s replacement, there were four people on the committee besides Tepper — Fitterer, assistant general manager Dan Morgan, vice president of football administration Samir Suleiman and chief administrative officer Nicole Tepper.
They interviewed nine candidates, three of whom received second interviews — Reich, interim head coach Steve Wilks and Kellen Moore. After Reich was hired, Tepper gave him a blank check to bring in assistants ranging from former head coaches (Dom Capers and Jim Caldwell) to several who look like future head coaches (Thomas Brown, Ejiro Evero, Josh McCown).
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Tepper employed a similar strategy after the Panthers decided to scrap the rent-a-quarterback model of the past three years and go with the draft-and-develop approach, which Fitterer had said was the preferred route since he arrived in Charlotte.
After acquiring the No. 1 pick from Chicago in a franchise-altering deal, the Panthers filled two private planes to jet from Columbus, Ohio, to Tuscaloosa, Ala., and north again to Lexington, Ky., for the pro days of Young, C.J. Stroud and Will Levis over three consecutive days. They also traveled to Florida for Anthony Richardson’s pro day after the owners’ meetings.
“I can’t emphasize enough, we are true to this process this time. Not all the time in other past years,” Tepper said. “But process in this coach. Process in getting this quarterback and not leaving a stone unturned. This is truly in everything we’re doing and everything that we did with the coaches and when Frank was hired. The process of, do we have the best person?”
“We’re not messing around. I’ll say it that way,” he added. “The work is here, truly.”
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Having a plan at quarterback and sticking with it is the opposite of what happened during Rhule’s tenure. And though Rhule might have been the impetus behind most of those moves, Fitterer and Tepper signed off on them.
Of course, the draft-and-develop strategy may not work either, which Tepper acknowledged by saying there’s no “sure thing” even when taking a quarterback first overall. And Tepper is still going to be a hands-on owner; that’s who he is. But the fact he’s acknowledging where he’s failed in the past, taking a more deliberate approach and surrounding himself with smart, serious people is a good step.
