Mr. Scot

I don't really have a whole lot of that lying around right now

The next pick after that is in the 4th.

I could see it.

It's honestly not guaranteed, and I'm not exaggerating. Rhule is just awful, and I have zero faith in any notion that's going to change anytime soon. I do however have a lot of confidence that I'm far from the only one who's thinking about it.

This is the full paragraph from The Athletic, and overall it's pretty non-committal. Rhule has five more years left on the seven-year, $62 million contract he signed in January 2020, but David Tepper has shown he’s willing to cut his losses and paper over his mistakes. Team sources believe Rhule will be back in 2022. But Tepper’s not happy about a fourth consecutive losing season, so nothing’s guaranteed unless or until the $16 billion hedge fund manager says Rhule is safe.

I have never not watched a Panthers season but another year of Matt Rhule would make it extremely difficult to do so.

Would he want to be?

Hasn't Robby also vouched for Rhule, though?

Also this offseason... Anybody doubt Rhule will bring him back?

I laughed pretty hard at the time, especially when they showed Cowher laughing on the sidelines Watched that game with a good friend who's a huge Steelers fan too. We had slightly different reactions to the final interception.

That wouldn't surprise me. It also won't surprise me if it's "addressed" by signing versatile guys with long arms

Mine as well...

He has a process in his head, but he's tied to silly things like arm length and crap of that sort... There are trained auto mechanics who could tell you all the ins and outs of a car and diagnose a problem deep within the engine just by listening to it run for about thirty seconds. Then there are guys who think they know car repair because they go on YouTube to look up how to change a car's oil or air filter or whatever. Matt Rhule is that second guy. So basically, the job of repairing the Panthers needs to be taken away from him and given over to a true, certified mechanic.

One positive to keeping Matt Rhule... You know all those complicated playoff scenarios you see late in the season where Team X needs to win but Team Y needs Team Z to lose or tie or whatever...yeah. Well good news, as long as we have Matt Rhule in charge, we can completely ignore those. They won't have anything to do with us at all

That's one of the reasons I'm not as high on Matt Eberflus as a head coach. He has ties to Garrett from their days in Dallas.

Neither would I. If the overwhelming majority of their resumé is ollege coaching, I'm probably not interested in hiring them for an NFL head coaching job at all, but if I were it would only be with some pretty high stipulations.

There's no shortage of "we could do this" or "we could try that" scenarios here and elsewhere, but it all begs the question... If you have to go to these kinds of lengths because of your head coach, why are you keeping him at all? The ultimate answer is that he just needs to go. I don't know if he will, but he should.

Saw this when it happened. I remember Cowher laughing

If I'm being brutally honest, Haason Reddick is probably the only Panther I think could make a legitimate case for a Pro Bowl nod this season. Maybe Zane Gonzalez but I doubt he's well known enough.

Mine too. I mean, is Tepper in denial? Does he just not get it? I'm not sure what to think right now.

My diabetes meds don't give me the kind of "vibes" that your meds seem to be giving you.

Where I see this "bandwagon" heading...

Depending on which staffs are fired (besides the two already done) there are certainly some good assistants set to come available. I just don't see us actually getting any of them.

Previous years, I'd agree This season?

This idea has been floated around a couple of times, but is it truly practical? Well... Let's say you demand that Rhule fire some of his staff. If the choice of who stays and who goes remains his, then chances are he just fires the people with no prior connections to him, i.e. Pat Meyer, Brian Angelichio, Chase Blackburn, Don Johnson. Except for Johnson (who's basically an assistant to an assistant), Rhule has replacements readily available to him on staff for all of those guys. He's also got a former member of his staff available in DJ Mangas. Mangas left for a spot on the LSU staff (WR coach, I think) but isn't being retained by new head coach Brian Kelly. Jeff Nixon probably gets named OC in this scenario (or any other, to be honest) so you either leave him with double duty or backfill. Mangas might be an option for RB coach is Rhule wants Nixon to concentrate solely on the OC job. And ultimate the staff becomes more Rhulified than ever. Does that leave us better off? Deck chairs...Titanic...etc. So then you say "Okay, force him to hire outside his own circle." You mean like he did with Joe Brady? Think about that for a moment. Can you imagine the interview process? The whole notion sounds awkward as hell. So then have Fitterer, Morgan or someone else do the interviews, basically hiring guys to work under a coach that doesn't want them? Yikes On top of all that, remember that Rhule turned down the Jets over staff control. Could forcing staff changes make him take off again? Maybe (and that's not the worst that could happen). But by the time all this comes to a head, have the other candidates all been hired? Quite possibly. Oy Bottom Line: The notion of forcing Rhule to make staff changes might sound good in theory, but in reality it likely isn't gonna work. So if (as many of us fear) Rhule does get another year, it's something of an "all in" proportion. And that...is terrifying