David Tepper Facts

[Mr. Scot]

David Tepper could solve the pandemic in a week. It's just that no one's asked him to.

David Tepper not only knows what really happened to Elvis; he's actually helping him hide.

David Tepper could handle being head coach, GM and in charge of team business operations all at the same time if he wanted to. He just doesn't like showing off.

_______________________________

Silly, right?

Yet back during prior conversations, plenty of people talked about David Tepper as if he was some kind of mafia godfather / secret master manipulator who could do and get anything he wanted. It reminded me of Chuck Norris Facts, but with a football spin.

Deshaun Watson? Tepper will not only make sure we get him, but he'll see to it that all those crazy charges are dropped and he's not only exonerated but deemed a national hero.

Left tackle? No problem. Tepper wont be satisfied unless and until we get the best one on the NFL, probably on a cheap contract too.

Referees making bad calls against the Panthers? Not on Tepper's watch. He won't allow the league to pull that kind of bullsh-t on us anymore.

Super Bowl? Guaranteed! Tepper can get us there. He won't let anyone or anything, including the NFL, stand in his way.

Yeah...no

Four years into his ownership, Tepper's ownership decisions haven't even managed to produce a single winning season, much less the back-to-back winning seasons that Panther fans have been pining for over the past twenty-plus years.

What he has done is continually put his faith in the wrong people. First it was Ron Rivera, then Marty Hurney and now Matt Rhule who Hurney hired and who Tepper gave the keys to the whole damn operation.

Oy

The hope when Tepper took over from Jerry Richardson was that his time with the Steelers had shown him how to properly run a football operation. You'd think surely he had to have learned something from his nine years as part of arguably the most successful organization in the league. I mean, Richardson may have wanted to emulate the Steelers, but here was a guy who was actually part of the Steelers and knew their methods.

Except he didn't...

We were hoping for Art Rooney. Instead we got Jim Haslam. And hell, even Haslam is doing better as an owner than Tepper right now.

"Well okay It's bad so far" you say, "but surely he's learning, right? There has to be hope for the future, doesn't there?"

I'd love to say yes, but the truth is I don't know.

The inability to distinguish who you should and shouldn't trust is a fatal flaw for an NFL owner. Throw in that Tepper has shown a tendency to want to do things differently than they're typically done just so he can show how smart he (allegedly) is. Then add a seemingly total lack of self-awareness concerning these things, and it all tallys up to a formula for utter disaster.

But if there is hope, it might come from an old friend...or some new ones.

Kevin Colbert is a name that has come up here a lot in the past. There have been indications for a while now that he might be set to part ways with the Steelers, and this year that seems more likely than ever.

At age 65, Colbert might be a little old to fully run the team like he did in Pittsburgh, and heaven knows he's got nothing left to prove. That said, he absolutely could serve as a short term consultant to help set the Panthers team operations up correctly so that we could move on to better things from here.

Barring that, the very least Tepper could do would be to fire Matt Rhule, then step back and let true football guys like Scott Fitterer and Dan Morgan pick the next head coach. I know someone's going to say that an NFL owner isn't going to stay out of such a decision. My point though isn't that he will, but that he should.

In fact, if he's truly as smart as he thinks he is and he genuinely wants the football team he owns to be a bona fide success rather than just a fun hobby, it's crucial that he does.

Of course, whether or not he's really all that smart is kind of the operative question right now, isn't it?

[Carl Spackler]

David Tepper is, in many ways, no different from a Huddler. He's a sports fan who turned a fantasy team into the real-life thing. The only problem is that he runs it as such and constantly makes the wrong decisions, but like in fantasy football he faces no real-life blowback for those actions.

[CanadianCat]

@Mr. Scottell us how you really feel. 

[chknwing]

[NorthTryon]

All facts except, when did he put his faith in Rivera? Rivera's last year, he went 5-0 with a backup QB at the helm in the midst of a season full of turmoil. Many feel like he always wanted his own coach to like you said prove how "smart" he was. I only hope that 3-0 and the embarrassment that followed this season can lead to Rhule's canning. 

[Mr. Scot]

19 minutes ago, NorthTryon said:

All facts except, when did he put his faith in Rivera? Rivera's last year, he went 5-0 with a backup QB at the helm in the midst of a season full of turmoil. Many feel like he always wanted his own coach to like you said prove how "smart" he was. I only hope that 3-0 and the embarrassment that followed this season can lead to Rhule's canning. 

For a short time, at least.

Tepper is acknowledged as the guy who suggested they switch to a 3-4 defense. In reality, they kind of switched. They built a roster populated with 3-4 type guys on the defensive side, but when the games were played, they didn't really use the alignment all that much.

The biggest deal with Rivera though is that Marty Hurney should have been the guy fired first. Rivera had produced better results with a different GM. I'll always wonder how things could have been different if we'd gone that route instead.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Mr. Scot

[Mr. Scot]

And hell, I didn't even touch on the whole ass backwards process of hiring a head coach then picking a GM. That was equally as goofy as anything else Tepper's done.

Probably should have included that in the original post.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Mr. Scot

[4Corners]

[NorthTryon]

6 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

For a short time, at least.

Tepper is acknowledged as the guy who suggested they switch to a 3-4 defense. In reality, they kind of switched. They built a roster populated with 3-4 type guys on the defensive side, but when the games were played, they didn't really use the alignment all that much.

The biggest deal with Rivera though is that Marty Hurney should have been the guy fired first. Rivera had produced better results with a different GM. I'll always wonder how things could have been different if we'd gone that route instead.

Yeah, I know 20/20 is hindsight, but a GM with less ego during SB run. A scenario was thrown out on GM thread about if we'd drafted Devante Adams like Proehl wanted instead of KB as well as Stephon Diggs instead of Ealy. There was another for Funchess that would have required zero trades either and our coaching staffed strongly pushed for these current league stars back then. The GM went in another direction altogether. And then when Richardson couldn't take anymore of it, he brought back Hurney. Damn, we wasted our window!

[Waldo]

And JR was a nice old man who turned out to be a racist sexual harraser. He absolutely looks like a Haslam so far.

I love thr idea of being saved by Colbert but I'm not sure he saves 2022. We would need to being him in asap, deffinatly before any moves are made.

[kungfoodude]

1 hour ago, Carl Spackler said:

David Tepper is, in many ways, no different from a Huddler. He's a sports fan who turned a fantasy team into the real-life thing. The only problem is that he runs it as such and constantly makes the wrong decisions, but like in fantasy football he faces no real-life blowback for those actions.

Soooo...Dan Snyder?

[kungfoodude]

24 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

And hell, I didn't even touch on the whole ass backwards process of hiring a head coach then picking a GM. That was equally as goofy as anything else Tepper's done.

Probably should have included that in the original post.

Well it makes sense when you leave final roster decisions to the head coach. Fit is Basically an assistant GM.

[SizzleBuzz]

[Paa Langfart]

TLDR version.

 

So far Tepper sucks as an owner.  And no one (except maybe Tepper) knows what he is going to do next.