Breaking, Ian Rapoport: Fitterer Fired

[MHS831]

29 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Klein chimes in...

Seems to be a theme 

This tells me two things:  1) The owner and others in the front office did not respect the GM enough to let him have the final say.  2) The Panthers had a GM who allowed them to disrespect him.  He because more of a PR agent, promoting decisions that were made instead of making them.

[Stuart Smith]

5 hours ago, frankw said:

Waking up to this news is like Christmas morning.

I just hope what we have in our stocking is not a lump of coal. 

[MHS831]

If you recall, Marty got in trouble when he started trading away first rounders.  I think we got Jeff Otah and Everette Brown as a result.  Fitterer traded away the first overall pick, a great WR, etc etc for what would become the first overall pick and has NOTHING to show for it.  Deserved to be fired--for fighting for this decision or not fighting against it.

[96Bravo]

I hope he completes the clean sweep and fires himself. 

[pantherj]

It fells great knowing Fitt is finally gone. He always did the opposite of what I wanted and it drove me crazy, and drove the Panthers into the NFL basement. We're lucky to have even had 2 wins, and look that those lost seasons under Darnold. Sad. Aimless. Hopeless. Pointless.

Unfortunately Fitt was allowed to trade CMC and DJ, and unload future draft picks before getting the boot. He was probably just flailing desperately to save his job and mortgaging our future in the process. It's going to hurt not having the #1 overall pick, but getting rid of Fitt is a nice consolation.   

The next GM has to prove he can hit on draft picks, and make good deals in free agency. With no 1st round pick, low levels of talent on the roster, a rookie contract QB, and CMC's money coming off the books, we should be able to make some big moves. And by big moves I don't mean a Burns mega deal, but rather fixing the offense. A smart GM will know to do that.

 

Edited January 8 by pantherj

[Steelo]

Not gonna lie.. I was cautiously optimistic this would finally happen.  It wouldn't have shocked me if he didn't get fired.  Yet, here we are. I actually *pending new GM hire* have hope we can right the ship.

[WhoKnows]

1 hour ago, Mr. Scot said:

Klein chimes in...

Seems to be a theme 

Who cares? He’s the GM. It’s like Reich not having the balls and conviction to say he wanted Stroud over Young means that he’s incompetent or he didn’t really have that conviction for Stroud. If Fitterer was literally a rubber stamp for others and couldn’t come up with better choices (there were dozens of those) then he should have been fired with Rhule just like many of us told you.

I hate these tweets and posts about trying to spread the blame on others. Fitterer’s boss in Seattle wasn’t just a Yes man so he should know better. He didn’t so he deserved to go just like Reich. They both performed poorly and didn’t come to the table with better ideas.

[WhoKnows]

13 minutes ago, pantherj said:

It fells great knowing Fitt is finally gone. He always did the opposite of what I wanted and it drove me crazy, and drove the Panthers into the NFL basement. We're lucky to have even had 2 wins, and look that those lost seasons under Darnold. Sad. Aimless. Hopeless. Pointless.

Unfortunately Fitt was allowed to trade CMC and DJ, and unload future draft picks before getting the boot. He was probably just flailing desperately to save his job and mortgaging our future in the process. It's going to hurt not having the #1 overall pick, but getting rid of Fitt is a nice consolation.   

The next GM has to prove he can hit on draft picks, and make good deals in free agency. With no 1st round pick, low levels of talent on the roster, a rookie contract QB, and CMC's money coming off the books, we should be able to make some big moves. And by big moves I don't mean a Burns mega deal, but rather fixing the offense. A smart GM will know to do that.

 

We just need a competent GM and coaching staff. Fitterer really did put the new GM in a bad position but here we are. Just need to actually start hitting on draft picks. I know it’s rare but looking at how the Rams righted their ship in literally one draft without a 1st is impressive. That GM and scouting team did their homework and killed it. They got 4 quality starters, not just starters like TMJ or Thomas.

[Steelo]

2 minutes ago, WhoKnows said:

We just need a competent GM and coaching staff. Fitterer really did put the new GM in a bad position but here we are. Just need to actually start hitting on draft picks. I know it’s rare but looking at how the Rams righted their ship in literally one draft without a 1st is impressive. That GM and scouting team did their homework and killed it. They got 4 quality starters, not just starters like TMJ or Thomas.

The fact that TMJ started late last season and was the second leading receiver on the squad still baffles me to this day.  At any rate, here's to a new era of Panthers football.

[WhoKnows]

2 minutes ago, Steelo said:

The fact that TMJ started late last season and was the second leading receiver on the squad still baffles me to this day.  At any rate, here's to a new era of Panthers football.

In one game, dude’s laziness cost us two TDs. He only has 1 TD in 3 years so he’s basically a net negative scoring wise in 3 years and we passed over a pro-bowl center, which was a huge need for us.

[Ricky Spanish]

1 hour ago, Mr. Scot said:

Klein chimes in...

Seems to be a theme 

So it seems to be no one's fault because everyone else made the decisions and everyone listened to everyone else. That means you can't blame ______

Fill in the blank - Reich, Fitterer, Tepper, Brown, McCown, Staley.....

It really seems people are doing their damndest to make Scott and Reich not look incompetent for what happened this season just because they are nice guys.

Fact is, we put together the worst roster and worst team of the year and we don't even have a first round pick to show for it.

That is failure top to bottom and EVERYONE needed to go. I don't care if Tepper is there to voice his opinion on matters - it makes sense, he's the owner. If the guys he hires don't have the testicular fortitude to disagree with the owner because they actually know better, then I don't want them in the FO.

[WhoKnows]

2 hours ago, 45catfan said:

You don't understand how this works and it shows.  NO TEAM has a full roster signed next year at this point, or the year after or the year after that.  Yes, we have dead money on the books, but so DOES EVERY OTHER TEAM. The 2024 roster is what it is at the top and again, other teams have under-performing players on the books too. 

Let me spell this out to you, good teams are generally cap poor because they have top players to pay.  Should be we higher? Somewhat, but just because we are a 2 win team doesn't mean we should have the top cap space either.  it's not a direct correlation.

SMH. I know the cap extremely well. I don’t need anything explained. The 2024 cap will be gone if we tag Burns and sign a FA like Higgins. That’s not a vast talent improvement. We’d basically have to borrow from 2025 to add more talent and then we’re in that same boat of wasting money on Teddy, Sam, Houston, Sanders, Thomas, Hurst, Donte, etc. (too many to mention) and still having a 2-5 game winning team.

Our 2026 cap hit is just our small 2023 draft class that could be 100% backups by then, so of course we have the most space. We likely are the only team without a good player/non-2023 rookie signed in 2026.

We are fake cap rich right now because we’ve got no long term talent tied up and we haven’t gone through 2024 free agency. Here’s to hoping the new GM realizes we aren’t going to compete in 2024 so maximize future picks and don’t waste cap space like 2019-2023 to get to 5-7 wins max.

[WhoKnows]

11 minutes ago, Ricky Spanish said:

So it seems to be no one's fault because everyone else made the decisions and everyone listened to everyone else. That means you can't blame ______

Fill in the blank - Reich, Fitterer, Tepper, Brown, McCown, Staley.....

It really seems people are doing their damndest to make Scott and Reich not look incompetent for what happened this season just because they are nice guys.

Fact is, we put together the worst roster and worst team of the year and we don't even have a first round pick to show for it.

That is failure top to bottom and EVERYONE needed to go. I don't care if Tepper is there to voice his opinion on matters - it makes sense, he's the owner. If the guys he hires don't have the testicular fortitude to disagree with the owner because they actually know better, then I don't want them in the FO.

Right on. So much time and effort to pull the blame off people. I remember a bunch of us who saw that Fitterer sucked after 2021/2022 drafts and wanted him gone with Rhule. Either Fitterer sucked at talent or he was a yes man. To be honest, I still don’t care because both of them (he probably was both) are not what builds a successful team.

[Mr. Scot]

20 minutes ago, Ricky Spanish said:

So it seems to be no one's fault because everyone else made the decisions and everyone listened to everyone else. That means you can't blame ______

Fill in the blank - Reich, Fitterer, Tepper, Brown, McCown, Staley.....

It really seems people are doing their damndest to make Scott and Reich not look incompetent for what happened this season just because they are nice guys.

Fact is, we put together the worst roster and worst team of the year and we don't even have a first round pick to show for it.

That is failure top to bottom and EVERYONE needed to go. I don't care if Tepper is there to voice his opinion on matters - it makes sense, he's the owner. If the guys he hires don't have the testicular fortitude to disagree with the owner because they actually know better, then I don't want them in the FO.

No one's fault equals everyone's fault.

Or more to the point, everybody in charge means nobody's in charge.

Fitterer came in as a consensus builder, which is likely what helped him get the job in the first place because that's how Tepper wanted to operate.

But the reality is you can't run a football team by committee. They needed one person with a guiding vision in charge, and Fitterer was trying to please everyone.

Top that off by hiring a head coach with basically the same MO and here we are.