Tepper's patience, Rhule's growth & the Panthers' evolution begins in earnest

[poundaway]

4 minutes ago, CRA said:

Yes, you are just making s blind statement.    You guaranteed we wouldn’t start 1-4 despite not knowing who we would play.  

given our opponents, the schedule could easily present itself with very hard start where a 1-4 start could happen.   Just depends what the schedule makers do.  Lot of tough opponents this year 

You're just dodging.  I get it.  Figures.  What I thought.

[poundaway]

59 minutes ago, thunderraiden said:

Look up the 2021 Tennessee Titans.

You're right.  Their back ups for Henry were FAR superior to ours.   One of them now plays for us.  We also had a worse OL that was more injury prone than theirs.  So we were playing backups to bad OL, while they mostly played their starters on the line all season.


 

Edited May 2, 2022 by poundaway

[CRA]

26 minutes ago, poundaway said:

You're just dodging.  I get it.  Figures.  What I thought.

lol.  

When the schedule comes out, I'll be happy to let you know I see the first 5 working out. 

We aren't going to have a winning record this season with our schedule.  Injury would have to change and alter who some of those teams are IMO for us to pull that off.  Right now our starting QB is Sam Darnold.  And improved OL or not.....we aren't beating the Rams, Bucs, Ravens, etc.  They have legit QBs.  It's a QB league.  Not a give the ball to CMC 30 times league and ask Sam to check down vs legit QBs.  

[Paa Langfart]

On 5/1/2022 at 12:14 PM, top dawg said:

a patient Tepper.

lol.  right

[Paa Langfart]

21 hours ago, CRA said:

This hasn’t been a complete rebuild.   Or I guess a poorly done one is better phrasing.  Which is one of the main problems with Matt Rhule and this failed era. 

Good thing Watson snubbed us or we would have been set back a few more years.  But tepper is "patient".  My big fat arse.

[CRA]

5 minutes ago, Paa Langfart said:

Good thing Watson snubbed us or we would have been set back a few more years.  But tepper is "patient".  My big fat arse.

patient and rebuilding also doesn't = making a run at 12 year vet (now 13 year vet) in Matt Stafford.   Tried that too.    

That's a move a team trying to win a Super Bowl now makes. 

 

[top dawg]

17 hours ago, Sgt Schultz said:

There are some good (and reasonable) points in the OP, but a lot of assumptions.  We have no evidence that Rhule decided to hire experienced assistants versus being told by either Fitts or Tepper to do so.  We have no evidence he gave up any of his roster control voluntarily.  We have no real evidence any of the draft was his doing.

We simply do not know, and we may never know. 

The covid situation made things difficult for him.  Pretty much a complete roster makeover, save a few parts, paring down salary cap mistakes from the previous brain trust, having to bring in a new staff.  All those things were made much more difficult.  But did he bring in “the old buddies” because of that, or did he do it because that is what he does?  He would not be the first coach/manager in any organization who surrounded himself with familiar faces.

I agree with some of the Tepper analysis.  People tend to assume successful business leaders and executives all walk around screaming and looking for heads to roll.  That is a fallacy.  Tepper seems to be more of the line that give people every chance to succeed before giving up.  He did that with Rivera, he did it again with Hurney, and he is doing it now with Rhule.  It is not necessarily fear nor avoiding owning up to a mistake.  It may well be concern over discarding talent too soon that could have/should have/perhaps will succeed.

I’m not at all sold that Rhule is that guy.  My problem is he exhibited every quality of a 6-foot man in 13-feet of water last year.  He mishandled almost every situation he touched.  And I am not one of those who thinks a coach should only have two years.  But there should be evidence of improvement, whether it shows up in wins or just a generally look that things are coming together.  Quite the opposite happened here last year.

He's the Panthers’ coach, and because of that I hope he pulls it together and puts and end to all this.  I’m just not at all optimistic about that happening.

I don't think that anyone thinks Rhule is the guy with anything resembling certainty. In fact, there are way more reasons to believe he is not the guy from a fan's perspective (not to mention that I haven't even discussed game day decisions). That being said, I believe it's a bit of a stretch to assume that he isn't learning. To be fair, I mentioned that we'll likely never get the full story behind the part that Tepper has played (is playing), but from the MMQB article in the other post, I think that it's a little bit telling that Rhule who was in between Tepper and Fitterer during draft night asked Fitterer what he wanted to do (as someone who is ultimately in charge might do at times), and Fitterer told him that it'd be best to wait and read the tea leaves in order not to "overpay". He obviously let Fitty--the expert--make the call, and followed his advice. That's a positive sign.

[top dawg]

5 hours ago, Paa Langfart said:

Good thing Watson snubbed us or we would have been set back a few more years.  But tepper is "patient".  My big fat arse.

I'm not going to fault Tepper for attempting to take advantage of what just may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The availability of a young, already-proven NFL franchise QB is not rare, it's unique. It never happens, and has never happened. If a young guy is available, he always comes with questions. It was really a one-off. But, the thing is, Tepper can be patient in some ways and impatient in others. Moreover, he's had to learn and is still learning just like everyone else. 

The MMQB story in the other thread portrays patience and not trying to step on toes from them all. Let's not forget that Tepper apparently wanted Fields, but he let his guy(s) run things and the Darnold debacle came to pass, but Tepper still exercised an extraordinary amount of patience in action and in words.

[mc52beast]

I’m not buying the “Tepper is being patient”rhetoric. He didn’t fire him after last season because he didn’t want to be called reactionary. He was quoted as saying the contract he gave Rhule was embarrassing which tells me if Rhule struggles early and often this year he’s gone.

[top dawg]

11 minutes ago, mc52beast said:

I’m not buying the “Tepper is being patient”rhetoric. He didn’t fire him after last season because he didn’t want to be called reactionary. He was quoted as saying the contract he gave Rhule was embarrassing which tells me if Rhule struggles early and often this year he’s gone.

That quote was attributed to sources, not necessarily what Rhule said himself. That could have been speculation or simply bullshit.

[top dawg]

2 hours ago, top dawg said:

That quote was attributed to sources, not necessarily what Rhule said himself. That could have been speculation or simply bullshit.

*Tepper

[JawnyBlaze]

I think part of the reason McAdoo was brought in was to have a bridge interim HC who has HC experience in the event Rhule still shows no improvement after like six games.  Of course, that theory goes out the window if he was strictly a Rhule hire. I dunno. 

[Actionman0z]

On 5/1/2022 at 9:14 AM, top dawg said:

Matt Rhule has honestly earned his status as the Panthers version of public enemy number one. It wasn't so long ago that there were "fire Rhule" chants in the dwindling crowds at Bank of America stadium, and even in crowds at a Charlotte Hornets basketball broadcast. But that's what happens when you decide to take shortcuts via bad maneuverings. From just jettisoning your brigde QB while paying most of his salary in 2020, to foolishly and 100 percent needlessly extending his replacement in 2021, who had displayed enough stop signs along his journey to Charlotte that a raging bull would cease charging because of continually getting sidetracked and confused in a sea of red. It's no wonder that we all started hearing unsubstantiated stories, or at the very least stories without any context, that painted David Tepper as an upset owner that had lost his patience and set Rhule's seat on fire. We now know that the stories, if true at all, were overblown.

As opposed to flying by the seat of his pants from the ballyhooed "success" of his college experiences and taking seemingly every opportunity to jump in front of the camera with his fast talking style that belied an undercurrent of arrogance and overstated knowledge of the most efficient way to build and sustain a successful team in the NFL, Matt Rhule seems to have finally learned to take a step back, hire guys with professional experience at their particular jobs in the NFL and let them do their thing. The behind-the-scenes part that Tepper has played will probably never be known in its entirety, but at least publicly he has given Rhule his full support. He said that he believes in Rhule. Tepper not only pretty much told you that Rhule is safe not only for 2022, but 2023 and possibly 2024. Some still don't believe it, but I do...at least for the next couple of seasons. 

You see, I couldn't exactly reconcile keeping Rhule and allowing him to wreck the immediate future of the franchise by making panic picks that were in the best interests of a man desperately clawing for his professional NFL life, and not in the long term interests of the franchise, particularly during a supposedly lame duck season, filled with constant pressure while the coach squirms on a glowing orange hot seat. That made little sense to me because at the end of the day it was counterproductive. I said in some thread weeks ago that it may be better to give Rhule a couple of more seasons for that very reason. Well, it appears that Tepper has taken that stance, a stance he appears to have had the day he hired Rhule. Tepper is still learning how to run an NFL franchise himself, and he obviously knows that learning and building takes patience. Some things just can't be rushed with good results. You can't always force things to happen the way that you want them to or you may hurt yourself; sometimes the best tact is to allow situations to present themselves to you, and that takes wisdom, maybe sometimes nerve, and discipline. 

Play-play time is over. Mistakes born of inexperience and sheer arrogance must be minimized if not eradicated. The 2022 draft seems less like an ending to Matt Rhule and company, and more like an ending to a bad storm. You don't go through the motions of hiring a group of key, knowledgeable and experienced coaches only to blow it all up several months later. You don't bolster up your scouting and give people more tools to farm more information in order to have temporary draft success. You don't draft a possible franchise LT at 6, and particularly a possible franchise QB at 94, with as much discipline and steely resolve as our FO did without giving everyone involved some time to see the fruit of such collective efforts. 

It's a new day. Rhule has got his mulligan via a patient Tepper. Rhule is on the clock, but it has always been Tepper's clock (and Tepper's alone). The FO has seemingly learned some bitter lessons from the past two seasons, and has at least started off the next two in a much more settled and prepared mental space. The way that free agency and the draft have been handled and maneuvered should at least give everyone new hope. You may not like Tepper's continued support of Rhule, but at least you should be able to understand the reasoning behind it. Change is in the air. Rhule seems more relaxed and maybe even relieved. He seems less talkative and more reflective (and better kept...). We may not have been able to see any process working in January at 1000 percent or otherwise, but, I dare say that in May, the outlook seems to have  markedly changed, at least 500 percent...for those that want to see it.

 

 

Or maybe he’s slowly doing what he said he was gonna do 3 years ago? 

[j2sgam]

To be fair, I wouldn’t call McAdoo’s HC experience legit NFL HC experience, even though it was, technically…..….

 

and I’ll take the avvy bet.. I’ll put my 12yr avatar up to that of your choice saying the Panthers start 2-3 minimum…..