Let's fix the Panthers part 1 - What are we dealing with?

The Carolina Panthers aren’t uniquely bad, but they’ve had a pretty rough go of it lately. Since they appeared in the Super Bowl in 2015, they’ve had exactly one winning season. Their 11-5 effort in 2017 is the only time they’ve won more than seven games in their last eight campaigns, and in four of their last five seasons they’ve won five or fewer games.

Most, but not all, of their malaise seems to center on owner David Tepper. Like many billionaires, he seems to think that the expertise (such as it is) that earned him his money in another field should translate to football. Unfortunately for Tepper, his track record so far is not great; since he bought the team in 2018, he’s burned through seven head coaches (counting incumbent Ron Rivera and several interim coaches) and three general managers. It turns out you can’t build a football team like a hedge fund. Who knew, aside from everyone but Tepper?

Anyhow, this team needs a fix. How would we go about doing that? To start, we should get an overall look at where the team stand in three key areas: general manager, head coach, and off-field considerations.

To read the rest of this post, support The Power Sweep on Patreon or Substack.