DPardue

The question is not whether Tepper would go after Harbaugh, but whether Harbaugh would be interested. Right now, if you are Harbaugh and you are looking to get back to the NFL, Carolina is down near the bottom of your list on possible landing spots. He could make a lot better career decisions than to come to Carolina.

That just wreaks of desperation.

So the WRs are gaining enough separation, huh, Frank? And Frank continues to laud Bryce. And then Thomas Brown said this week he is "not concerned at all" about protection, especially on third down. So where does the blame lie, Frank, for a team that ranks 30th in total offense, 26th in yards passing and 30th in allowed sacks?

The mismanagement of those last three plays was almost high schoolish. You would certainly expect more from a supposed experienced staff. It's like fourth down sneaked up on the staff. How can you not plan ahead? You have a poor OL, WRs that struggle to gain separation, and an inexperienced rookie QB who has not played well. Down by three, it's 1st and 10 on the 41. The first priority is to get yourself into a position where you can at least feel pretty good about tying it. Then you work your way toward a TD from there. Three straight pass plays later (one deep and one ill advised) and you are spotting up for a 59 yarder. All they needed was about five yards to have a realistic shot of a successful FG. Five yards in three plays is not much to ask, particularly when you blow a timeout to try to make sure you have your ducks in a row.

I don't know if Fitterer will be the first one out the door, but he should be. He's been here long enough to show positive results for his decisions. Optically, it is better to fire a GM who is almost three years in than a head coach who is just nine games in. Tepper desperately needs Reich to right this ship. To fire Reich before the end of season one would once again show that Tepper failed to bring in the right guy; it further paints him as an very impatient and incompetent owner. Tepper's meddling is going to work against him on the next hire anyway, but he is really going to eliminate the candidate pool if he pulls the trigger on a firing before the end of the season for a staff that he heralded from day one as being top notch. It's going to be very difficult to bring in a staff with a meddling impatient owner for a team that has quite a few holes and not enough draft capital to fill those holes in the short term. Now if the team finishes the season at 1-16, well...

I didn't think we could look much worse than we did in the first quarter against the Browns to start the season. I missed that assumption by a mile. On an unrelated note, I am not sure how this notion started that the Panthers have a solid defense, but it simply isn't true and has not been true for most of the season. The national media folks like to throw that statement around, perhaps as a result of group think, but they clearly have not dug into the numbers. After Sunday there should be little question that this defense needs a lot of work...a lot.

The front office could not have botched the QB any worse had they tried. They traded Bridgwater, paid seven million of his salary, and got a sixth round pick in return. Then they trade a second, fourth, and a sixth round pick for a guy who had struggled with the Jets and is proving to be worse than Bridgewater who he replaced. Now just seven games into a three year deal with Darnold, the Panthers may be willing to once again throw assets to another team for a QB to replace Darnold. It's like the Panthers front office cannot differentiate between fantasy football and the real thing.