Carolina Panthers fire offensive coordinator Joe Brady during the NFL team’s bye week

The Carolina Panthers fired offensive coordinator Joe Brady with five games left in the 2021 regular season, the team announced Sunday.

Running backs coach Jeff Nixon will take over play-calling duties. Nixon, a senior offensive assistant, was offensive coordinator at Baylor under Matt Rhule when he was head coach.

“I met with Joe this morning and informed him that I have decided to make a change,” Rhule said in a press release announcing the move. “I’m very grateful to him for his time and effort in helping us get established over this past year and a half.”

The Panthers were on a bye week this week.

Rhule hired Brady, 32, from LSU in January of 2020 to serve as the Panthers’ OC shortly after he was hired to coach the Panthers. Brady was coming off a year in which LSU won a national championship. He was regarded as one of the best young minds in college football. He interviewed for at least four NFL head coaching positions last offseason.

But his 1 1/2 seasons with the Panthers were rarely smooth. Though Rhule and Brady both publicly said they were on the same page, the results did not indicate that.

Rhule said he wanted the Panthers to be a running football team, but in some games, the Panthers rarely ran the ball, instead throwing it all over the field. Brady was the offensive play-caller.

Last week, after the Panthers’ brutal 33-10 loss to the Miami Dolphins, Rhule was asked whether he still supported Brady’s playcalling. Rhule responded, “I don’t even know that I’ve always defended him. I’ve said we need to run the ball more. I always looked at it very even keel. I’m not going to be super inflammatory like everyone wants me to be.”

He added that he planned to look at the film after the game.

A day later, on Monday, Rhule said he didn’t have any immediate plans to make any changes to his coaching staff, but he also didn’t rule it out.

Last year, the Panthers’ offense was mediocre at best: 21st in the league in total yards per game.

This year, they’ve been worse. The Panthers currently rank 28th in the league in yards per game, and 23rd of 32 teams in points per game.

Part of that can be attributed to the Panthers’ lack of production from the offensive line, the lack of a franchise quarterback, and injuries to Christian McCaffrey. McCaffrey has missed 18 games in two seasons and will miss the remaining five with a severe ankle injury.

The Panthers have also started four quarterbacks in the past two years, including Cam Newton, who they signed midway through this season.

But Brady was never able to make the adjustments to get the offense to a stable and consistent place.

In their loss to the Dolphins last week, the Panthers managed only 243 yards of total offense, and fell to 5-7.

The Panthers will now have Nixon lead the offensive playcalling duties with help from the rest of the offensive staff. Nixon was Baylor’s co-offensive coordinator and running backs from 2017 to 2019.

In 2017, Baylor ranked 98th in the country in points per game. In 2019, Baylor ranked 27th in the country in points per game.