Should we keep Rivera for another Season?

[La Pantera]

^ what Raysor said.

[iamhubby1]

Personally, I would rather Rivera stay. For two reasons. 1. I believe you have to give him time to succeed. 2. You are setting yourself up for a coaching go round.

Unless you hire and established coach, you are taking a chance. So imo you might as well give Rivera a chance to grow into the job.

Also, you have to at least concider the facts that if you replace Rivera, you will have two contracts. You will be starting over, again. You may have to take a chance on another up and comer, which may or may not work. And that you just may confuse your players even more than they already are.

So I say, unless this year is a total tank job. And unless you know you can get an already successful HC. You may just as well keep Rivera.

At least that is what I think I think.

[Happy Panther]

it wouldn't matter if they kept him.

he wouldn't have a place to play, we'd burn that mafugin stadium to the ground.

Completely disagree.

The stadium is mostly concrete which is very difficult to burn

[Bj-Monster23]

I understand where Doc Holiday and iamhubby1 is coming from. When I look at the situation, I can say that it might be fair for Rivera to stay another year. But regardless how you look at the situation this team has really regressed under Rivera. The truth that matters is that Rivera is the HC so he is suppose to have complete control over his coaching staff. If we are in the wrong defense, its his job to tell Mcdermott to get us out of zone or man. The same thing can be said on the offensive side. You made a point about how bad our secondary is, its up to Rivera and the DB coach to make them get better. It's their job to groom those players whether its mentally or physically. With me looking at that I feel Rivera has failed his job so I would say he shouldn't be retained as HC.

[MadHatter]

Not only no....but hell no

[rayzor]

Personally, I would rather Rivera stay. For two reasons. 1. I believe you have to give him time to succeed. 2. You are setting yourself up for a coaching go round.

Unless you hire and established coach, you are taking a chance. So imo you might as well give Rivera a chance to grow into the job.

we should be hiring an established coach. the team cannot afford to spend another couple years hoping that another assistant coach without any HC experience can make the jump to HC.

this is a team that has gotten to a point that it has to win now. it can't afford another rebuild. it has to be able to hit the ground running without learning game and team management.

i don't buy into this "might as well keep rivera around" thing. he's here. might as well see what he's got. why? haven't we seen enough. i know i've seen enough to know that it wouldn't be hard to replace him and, as i said earlier, he hasn't really provided a convincing argument why a new GM who will probably be anxious to get this team headed in the right direction should stick with rivera. he's not winning. he's not getting the job done. he's taking much too long to learn and there's no guarantee that he will learn it.

move on. there's so little incentive to stay this course. it was advertised as something that is very aggressive and progressive, but overall when things get tough it just more of the same that we had with fox the last couple years he had control.

we just can't risk continuing that way. something needs to change. a new GM will likely see that a new HC will help him facilitate that change.

now if it appeared that the panthers were 100% on board with rivera and were completely sold on him and his program or had bought into it....maybe he could stay. if they had improved over last year...yes, he could probably stay. neither of those is the case.

[Monday Night Shyamalan]

True but in this case I'm doing a criticle thinking argument, I'm trying to get some people to consider a different point of view and have already stated as much in this thread.

Am I doing this because I believe we should keep Rivera? Nope never said we should keep him, just stated the case for keeping him.

This thread is more relevent for actual panther discussion then 99% of everything that's posted in here

Doc, you shot yourself in the foot with that statement, as well as starting this thread.

[carolinarolls]

coaching go round be damned/ that is exactly what losing coaches are meant to do... go round

[MaineManPanther]

Would not have a problem if he left. However, he did help to take a horrible offence in 2010 and turn it to a top ten. And took a awful defense in 2011 and turned it to currently a top 10.

[tight lines]

I think he's done a great jobs hiding the DB's for the most part,

Hes done a hell of a job hiding his running backs, I wish someone could find them

[1989]

I know what you're thinking already "this guy is out of his mind" and sometimes you would be correct. but hear me out on this.

I'm arguing that the Coaches aren't the issue

First think what is wrong with the Panthers

Offense:

1)O-line

2)Receiving options.

3)Running game

Unlike some in the National media I don't think Cam has had quite that bad of a season, now there have been a few games here and there but nothing outside of the Normal growing pains of a QB in the NFL.

The Offenses biggest issue this season have been the Offensive line, it wasn't playing great this season and then we went and lost our all-pro center Ryan Kalil, and since to say they have played badly would be an monumental understatement. they have been horrible in run blocking and almost just as bad in Pass blocking, I think if we had a less mobile QB you would understand better just how badly they have played this season. If you want to know why we have not had a running game this season, they are it.

Receiving Core: what do we have? Smith, while still decent isn't a #1 threat anymore, and LaFell is a solid #2 but not #1 material, the only receiver with any exceptional skills is TE Greg Olsen with his size which by itself creates miss matches with defenders. This is where loosing Shockey hurt us most. Our WR's are neither exceptionally speedy or big which makes it difficult for them to get separation, add to that the O-line plays like crap meaning less time for Cam Newton to pass means less time for an already limited Receiving core to get separation.

Running game, the reason the Panthers have focused on switching to Stewart over D-Will is because of the Oline, no push, no lanes, Williams has always been known for making players miss, not breaking Tackles and thats why Stewart the sole Starter now.

The realization of just how bad the Offensive line is becomes just that much more astounding when you realize that we have been trying to game plan around it pretty much since our by week. the Shotgun snaps, multiple pump fakes and attempts at miss direction have all been to give Newton more time and try and get our WR's open.

The best example I can think of for this is the Denver Game, the Reason why Olsen had a really good game was because he was the only one the entire time constantly getting open.

Defense:

We have an emerging quality Defensive line, and a Solid LB'er core, the main issue is that our DB's are crap. what many have thought was the recent improvement by our Defensive backfield has been in large part due to Mr. Hardy and Mr. Johnson, two men that have been pulling more then their weight around here. a great pass rush in the DB's best friend and that's what has been going on here lately. there is only 1 DB that I would even Consider true NFL starter Quality playing right now and that's Charles Godfrey and even with that said he's middle of the road nothing special.

Special teams

the Special Teams coach was fired last week, and many here myself included think it was long over due. need I say more?

Coaching.

The Offense this year started out way to gimmicky and they for the most part put an end to that after the bye week.

Overall they have kept the offense manageable and the Defense has been on the up swing for a while now, only problem is our Horrible defensive backfield always tends to show up when we need it least at the end of games.

Here's my train of thought on this, the issues with the team are well known, and considering the issues with the Oline and DB's I think that our coaching have done a decent enough Job keeping us in games to win, it's not that far of a grasp to say that we shouldn't at least be sitting at 6-4 right now still in the playoff hunt with the easiest part of our schedule ahead of us. remember that Coaching can only go so far, and players still have to play the game.

And with that said outside of the Giants game I haven't really seen anything that I would say the Coaching staff just straight out blew or messed up. I think when you look at the team for what it is and not rose colored glasses you will see that.

I agree with you and I can actually see Rivera here another season.

[Bj-Monster23]

To be honest we made a mistake the first time by keeping Marty and firing Fox. Marty should've left when Fox did. I'm not ok with keeping Rivera and getting a new GM. What if down the road Rivera doesn't improve, we will be in the same situation like last time. With a new GM we should get a new coaching staff. It just makes better sense.

[AceBoogie]

Would not have a problem if he left. However, he did help to take a horrible offence in 2010 and turn it to a top ten. And took a awful defense in 2011 and turned it to currently a top 10.

Excuse you sir but maybe you didn't notice the additions of Cam,Shockey,and Olsen. For goodness sakes We had like four different quarterbacks in 2010 and they were all terrible. Don't give Rivera credit for that.

[Doc Holiday]

Doc, you shot yourself in the foot with that statement, as well as starting this thread.

well, Critical not whatever the hell I typed, been typing most of the thread on my iPhone for what it's worth, but the statement is correct.

It's a critical thinking argument, I've had no intention of winning or losing any kind of a argument from the word go, I just wanted to put the thought out there. I'm just been tired of hearing all the "Fire Rivera", blah blah blah posts so I figured I throw a wrench into the discussion and get people to argue for or against with at least simi-factual based arguments instead of shouting "Fire Rivera 100 times" as if no one heard them the first time.

so excuse me for trying to get people to think more.