The jokes write themselves

[Khyber53]

11 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

Kudos for staying positive or criticism for being delusional?

Robby missed the ball on that one like he's pretty much missed the ball all year.

[cookinbrak]

4 hours ago, L-TownCat said:

Ron Cherry still a douche?

He changed his name to Don. Jerk.

[lightsout]

If you're an NFL coach and you can't designate one or two assistants to stare down the line and watch for penalties during team offense....you should probably not be an NFL coach.

This is a sad state of affairs. Like kudos for doing something, but this is a bad sign.

[Carl Spackler]

13 hours ago, Cdparr7 said:

Imagine that. Rhule will have us winning the MAC or Mountain West conference before you know it.

We’re still not bowl eligible. 

[ncstatekwi]

RHULE seems desperate at this point!  Sunday will be interesting...especially if we lose!

[Snake]

Honestly this is why you don't hire college head coaches. 

[MHS831]

Rhule concluded that the problem cannot possibly be coaching because the coaches have not been flagged this season.

 

[Fox007]

5 hours ago, bigskypanthersguy said:

I want to be elite.

Yea I long let go of the Patriot hate and just respect the high level of everything from the cheating to the actual play. poo if we won a poo ton of SBs and all the NFCS could say is something about deflated balls or w/e then so be it

This is many orders of magnitude worse

[bigskypanthersguy]

2 minutes ago, Fox007 said:

Yea I long let go of the Patriot hate and just respect the high level of everything from the cheating to the actual play. poo if we won a poo ton of SBs and all the NFCS could say is something about deflated balls or w/e then so be it

This is many orders of magnitude worse

I'll always be disgusted by their cheating but would not mind our reaching that level of play.

I could tolerate them if they were that good and didn't have to cheat.

Besides, their rebuild didn't last very long and that fanbase deserves decades of suffering.

[Captroop]

15 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

So we had an officiating crew on hand at today's practice to help with team discipline because the Panthers have been committing a lot of penalties.

Where did they come from, you ask?

Almost 20 percent of your drives start out hobbled by penalties. I don't think it can be overstated how important it is to resolve that issue and what a colossal failure in coaching it represents. It's stood out so clearly this season just how devastating those early penalties can be. When you're first and 15 or first and 20 in the shadow of your own end zone, it drastically reduces your playcalling options, which, more often than not leads to the bad situation compounding with a stuffed run, a sniffed out screen, a sack, or worst of all an interception. And it seems to ALWAYS happen in a critical situation, when we're still in position for a game-winning or tying drive, and the clock is winding down, and one of our fugging moron linemen flinches. I don't care who is at the helm. That poo should have been fixed in the first quarter of the season.

[Anybodyhome]

3 hours ago, cookinbrak said:

He changed his name to Don. Jerk.

Well played.

On this board, that one flew over quite a few heads into the netting.... lol...

[philit99]

2 hours ago, Anybodyhome said:

Well played.

On this board, that one flew over quite a few heads into the netting.... lol...

Oh some of us got it, a whole Bunch of us did.

[Basbear]

8 hours ago, MHS831 said:

Rhule concluded that the problem cannot possibly be coaching because the coaches have not been flagged this season.

 

Have the panthers ever lead the league in penalties for the whole year? I swear rhule prides himself and his staff on being great developers and better on field teachers......this team can not stop getting flagged, plus it feels like most are on 3rd down for defensive and all downs for O.(mainly 1st down and the struggling unit is now 1st and 20...). Gotten worse week after week as well...

[ladypanther]

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/12/9/22825514/coaching-hot-seat-index-matt-rhule-mike-zimmer-joe-judge

Quote

 

December is considered the most wonderful time of the year for a lot of people, but not for NFL coaches. The start of the holiday season coincides with the start of coaching hot seat season, and this year’s festivities got off to a quick start when the Panthers parted ways with offensive coordinator Joe Brady on Sunday.

In a matter of months, Brady went from hot coaching prospect to unemployed after a philosophical disagreement with Matt Rhule led to his dismissal. It might not be the last firing we see in Carolina. Sources told Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio that Rhule, who’s just two years into a seven-year contract, could be the next to go. Time will tell how accurate that report is, but Rhule’s seat is a lot hotter than it was a few months ago.

Rhule joins a growing list of coaches who will be fighting for their jobs over the next month. In all, I count five NFL head coaches who are squarely on the hot seat as we head into the final stretch of the 2021 season. Let’s take a look at why these coaches are under fire, and then help their respective teams decide on their fates. We’ll start in Carolina.

Matt Rhule, Carolina Panthers
As a Panthers fan, I need to get one thing out of the way before we go any further.

OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system, let’s talk about Rhule, who was so impressive in his 2020 interview that the Panthers canceled a scheduled interview with Josh McDaniels so they could hire the former Baylor coach on the spot. During his time in the college ranks, Rhule built a reputation as a program-builder: He turned Temple from a bottom feeder into a perennial bowl team before cleaning up the mess that Art Briles left behind at Baylor, culminating in a Sugar Bowl appearance in 2020. That was enough to convince Panthers owner David Tepper to sign Rhule, whose lone postseason win as a head coach came in the illustrious Texas Bowl, to a seven-year deal worth $62 million. The hope was that he could build a long-term winner in Carolina.

But the Panthers haven’t done a lot of winning under Rhule, and there doesn’t seem to be a long-term plan in place. Rhule’s hiring was supposed to mark the beginning of a massive rebuild. One of his first major moves was to cut Cam Newton, which made sense for a team that was starting over. Newton was making a lot of money, and it had been a few seasons since he looked fully healthy. Yet then Carolina gave Teddy Bridgewater a $63 million deal to replace him. It traded young guard Trai Turner for overpriced veteran tackle Russell Okung, who had publicly contemplated retirement the previous season. Then it went out and signed Robby Anderson to a free-agent deal worth $20 million. These were not the moves of a rebuilding team.

Fast-forward to the 2021 season, and the Panthers still don’t seem particularly interested in a reset. They gave up draft capital in a midseason trade for the aging Stephon Gilmore, and then gave Newton $6 million guaranteed to play half a season after Sam Darnold was placed on IR with a shoulder injury. General manager Scott Fitterer characterized the Newton signing as a move that would help the team win now, but that’s not how things have worked out. After two consecutive losses with Newton as the starter, the Panthers are 5-7 with a mere 2.4 percent chance to make the playoffs, per Football Outsiders. Carolina’s chances of landing a top-five pick sit at 6.2 percent, leaving fans with little to root for over the coming month. Newton’s reunion tour might be the only reason to tune in.

It’s been nearly 23 months since the Panthers hired Rhule to rebuild the team, and said rebuild has yet to get started.

Should they keep him?
Carolina fired the wrong coach. While Brady was the scapegoat for Rhule’s ongoing failures, offensive play-calling hasn’t been the issue. The offensive failures fall squarely on Rhule and his handpicked general manager; after all, Brady did not pick the team’s quarterbacks, nor did he put together what might be the worst offensive line in the NFL. I’m not sure there’s a coordinator in the league who can field a productive offense with a leaky front line and a deeply flawed quarterback room.

Rhule cited the Panthers’ low run rates as a major point of contention, which should set off alarm bells for anyone who has read even one statistical study of the sport over the past, I don’t know, 20 years? Rhule says he wants the Panthers running 30 to 33 times a game, but that’s hard to do when the team is constantly playing from behind. When filtering out garbage time, Carolina hovered around league average in pass rate last season and is well below the league average this season.

 

If anything, Brady was calling too many runs. Throw in the Panthers’ conservative approach to fourth-down decision-making, and this should be a rather easy decision for an analytically inclined owner like Tepper.