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Did the Panthers hire the wrong guy?

frash.exe

By frash.exe,
in Carolina Panthers

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Dave Gettlemen will hire a defensive coach that has ties to the NYG.

he also knows Mike Sullivan, former Giants WR coach and then QB coach and now OC at tampa. Sullivan supposedly helped Manning out tremendously when he became QB coach.  I'd like a new coach with HC experience (pro) too but I think that list is pretty shotrt.

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panthers55 Grand Master

panthers55

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I have never really bought the concept of head coaches being "offense guys" or "defense guys". True as it may be that head coaches have the final say on playcalling, a lot of head guys around the league don't get in the way of great coordinators. The problem in Carolina is that we've never really had even adequate coordinators with rare exception. A lot of us still pine for Jack Del Rio's defense from 2002 but who can we say other than Del Rio has been a star at the offensive coordinator position? Chud? Prior to Chud we had Jeff Davidson and Dan Henning for a decade.

 

Take for example John Fox and the dreaded "foxball era", we had here. Last year the Broncos had the 5th best offense in the NFL and this year they have the 2nd. He trusted Mike McCoy to make his own calls and they passed the ball 585 times. Much different than the 3 yards and a cloud of dust first and second downs we had here. So far this year even with McCoy's departure, they're sitting at 45 points per game through the first two games.

 

There has to be trust all the way down the line in the system. Carolina going with old time football guys who defer to the head coach on all matters is giving the head coach too much to think about. That's why I think the dynamic with Chud worked well here, because he had his own plans and he called what he thought would work and Rivera wasn't meddlesome. Now we have the best offense on paper we've had in a while and to the surprise of nobody Mike Shula can't make heads or tails of it. He has taken Cam's best asset, his improvisational running, and neutered him. Cam the past two seasons has averaged 50 first downs per season and this year he only has 4 so far and is getting about half as many carries. The reason that "option QB's", have never worked in the NFL before this recent fad came about was that coaches of Shula's era always attempted to make them pocket quarterbacks and thereby negated their strengths. The ideology of you'll never be a true QB until you drop back 30 times a game has died in this league but there are people out there still trying to keep it alive. The dinosaurs. We have one running our offense. Love him or hate him, Chud entirely disregarded the fact that Cam wasn't as strong in the pocket as other QB's and creatively called plays that allowed him to utilize his very particular set of skills. We don't have that anymore.

 

With that said, Rivera has done an awful job with the lead in football games. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that when we had the lead in close games down the stretch, our playcalling would change entirely. It was like a flip was switched to shut off the power. We started playing boring grind-the-clock football and we're not equipped to play that style. We don't have a back that can get 4 yards a touch in those situations. We're just as likely to lose yards as gain them between the tackles. Now, with Shula, we're playing that style of football for 4 quarters instead of exclusively with the lead. And we wonder what's going wrong?

 

I want the next hire we make to have limited control over his coordinators. I want the coordinators to do their jobs and be accountable. I want us to give them enough power to keep them here. We have most of the pieces we need on the field, we just need the play calls to match the talent.

Denver has an explosive offense because of Peyton Manning.  Manning imported  his offense and he runs the show there.  John Elway called that shot.  I doubt Fox had much to do with it or how the offense runs.

 

Gettleman is likely influencing how the offense is being run here. Like others have said Gettleman is conventional and old school.  I don't know at this point how much of what we do is Rivera's decisions on offense or whether he is just doing what gettleman wants given the fact he is on the hot seat.

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Anybodyhome Grand Master

Anybodyhome

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Short and correct answer to the OP: Yes.

 

While many have made the point Rivera was, essentially, the "best of the worst" in a casting call which included Fewell, Ryan and Manusky, I would have to argue that assumption based upon the fact that none of the other 3 possible candidates were interviewed and turned away by about 10 other teams.

 

The real question, if we're going to continue looking back in hindsight, is how did Rivera convince the Carolina Panthers he was the right man for the job when he couldn't do the same on at least 10 other occasions? Or, if we all remember correctly, did the Panthers simply wait too long to even begin looking for the new guy and the list of eligible guys was much smaller had they not drug their feet.

 

We can only hope that JR has stepped away from the personnel decisions enough to trust Gettleman in making the decision for head coach- something he should have been given the opportunity to do last season.

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Zaximus Veteran

Zaximus

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Maybe the Rivera pick at the time was ok, but after the first year, it was evident he wasn't HC material.  After the SECOND year, it was clear.  In that second year, we could have got Andy Reid to coach us this year.  I don't blame the front office for the first year, or the second year, THIS year, is all on them.

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rayzor Grand Master

rayzor

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Once again, defensive minded head coaches with strong/successful offensive coordinator would rock. Or even the other way around.

Got to have both.

here's the problem....when it comes down to 4th and 1, what is the HC going to do? which bent is he going to have? DCs tend to be overly cautious and make the same calls that rivera has been making. that hasn't worked because the nature if the game has changed. 

 

i've been preaching this for a while now, the rule changes have made it easy for teams to make long drives downfield in a very short amount of time and now with so many teams having an uptempo offense, in those situations where they need to go to a hurry up offense, they are going to be more proficient in it. basically, the cards are stacked against the defense in those situations.

 

if the HC from a defensive background is predisposed to trust the side of the ball because that's what he's more familiar with, it won't matter how good the offense is or how bad the defense is in those situations, his mindset is "the safest thing for me to do is trust my defense."

 

and it's not just those situations. defensive coaches tend to err on the side of caution and tap the brakes frequently. again, the nature of the league right now is to go balls to the wall on both sides and  it's all too easy to exploit teams that tap the brakes.

 

this isn't an argument of OC vs DC as HC (although i think an OC would be better than DC), but it needs to be someone who can look at it from both sides objectively and situationally. i don't trust people fresh from a coordinator job to be able to do that.

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