Who is Really Responsible for the Carolina Panthers 2023 Failure?
Photo Credit: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
The 2023 Carolina Panthers were one of the biggest trainwrecks football fans have seen in the past few years. We’d have to go all the way back to the Deshone Kizer-led Cleveland Browns that went 0-16 back in 2017 to see a more dysfunctional and poorly ran organization than this past year’s Panthers team.
Now that the season is completely over, it is a good time to look back on it all and make the final assessment of who is really responsible for the team’s failure this past season. Most of the casual fans would point the finger at head coach Frank Reich for the team’s failure and call it at that, but if you look deeper into the issue, you find out that the 2023 season is just the tip of the iceberg of a five-year fall from grace for the Panthers that all started back in 2018.
In July 2018, David Tepper purchased the team from Jerry Richardson who owned the team since its foundation in 1995 for $2.275 billion, a record-setting purchase and made David Tepper the richest owner in the NFL. Since the purchase, the Panthers have yet to have a winning record, with their best record coming last year when they finished 7-10 after interim Head Coach Steve Wilks took over after Matt Rhule was fired halfway through the season.
After the great turnaround that Wilks and the Panthers showed in the latter half of last year, utilizing a strong run game to beat teams like the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks, what do you think David Tepper decided to do for the head coach position? Tepper decided to let Wilks walk and instead decided to hire the recently fired former Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich, a pass heavy play caller who failed in Indianapolis for the organization’s inability to get good quarterback talent in after Quarterback Andrew Luck retired early into his career due to injuries.
The first pick that this new regime under Reich took was Alabama quarterback Bryce Young who failed miserably in Carolina his rookie year and is already in the discussions for bust category. Young was an interesting pick due to his short stature at the position, where Reich favored a much taller and pocket passer type of player like Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud who was taken the pick after by the Houston Texans.
If the Texans and Stroud do not have the breakout season they do then the discussion around Bryce Young, but the problem is that the Panthers were not a team that is just a quarterback away from being competitive and former Panthers General Manager Scott Fitterer did not draft well especially on the offensive line. The Panthers had one of the worst offensive lines in football last year, with only the Washington Commanders being close in the amounts of pressure and sacks they gave up. Top 10 pick offensive tackle Ikem Ekwonu has been nothing short of a bust, somehow regressing from his rookie year and being one of the worst graded offensive linemen of the season with a PFF grade of 67.4. Rookie wide receiver Jonathan Mingo was also a disappointment this year, having some of the lowest separation among wide receivers this year, with the only bright spot on the entire offense being wide receiver Adam Thielen.
The Panthers have been set back multiple years in their rebuild with the trades that Scott Fitterer made during his tenure with the team, with the most notable being his trade up package for the number one overall pick in the 2023 draft. Trading away multiple first round picks and their star wide receiver D.J. Moore, which flourished for the Chicago Bears and would have been a perfect target for a rookie Quarterback like Bryce Young.
Photo Credit: ESPN
This team showed last year the winning formula which is in their run game where they were one of the best rushing offenses in the league under Steve Wilks. Instead, Tepper did not go with the guy who already had a locker room behind him, but instead wanted to make a “big splash hire,” which totally flopped in his face with Frank Reich being fired halfway through the season.
Now that you have seen all the information above, the question becomes why it is all Tepper’s fault for their failure last year. It is fairly simple in the fact that Tepper’s entire philosophy is that he wants to have “yes men” around him, and he dreams of becoming the East Coast version of Jerry Jones. The issue with that is that Jerry Jones knows how to run an organization, and he also knows what makes good and bad football teams and does not just throw his money around like there is no tomorrow. We can see this even in the way that Tepper runs his MLS team, Charlotte FC, where he has fired just as many coaches there as he has for the Panthers as well.
Good owners make good decisions and know when to let go of deadweight in the organization. Instead, Tepper has these things I would like to call “Tepper Tantrums.”
From throwing drinks onto opposing fans to lashing out at players in the locker room after a loss to the Titans.
Tepper has slowly become the new Dan Snyder of the league, with many fans of not just the Panthers, but NFL fans in general turning against him and deeming him the new worst owner in the NFL.
