From Matt Rhule flop to missing on Matthew Stafford, Panthers' David Tepper is paying hefty price for lessons in NFL ownership

In the first year of his sole ownership of an NFL franchise, David Tepper was in the backseat of an automobile heading south on a freeway from Charlotte, North Carolina.

In his hands, the hedge fund multibillionaire and Carolina Panthers owner held a diagram laying out a proposed $800 million practice complex and team headquarters in Rock Hill, South Carolina. On Tepper’s lips: The grandiose future of his NFL dream, which he’d been hunting since becoming a minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2009.

“There’s no reason not to have first class of everything here,” Tepper said of the Panthers.

It was late spring in 2019 and Tepper was speaking into an NFL Films camera. The Panthers had just come off a disappointing 7-9 season, painfully chronicled by a film crew for the Amazon docuseries “All or Nothing." Now Tepper was on a trip to survey a swath of land in South Carolina that was earmarked as a future cornerstone of his NFL empire. This would be the perfect way to wrap the Amazon series, closing with a hopeful four-minute teaser leaning into Tepper’s ambitions for greatness.

As the cameras rolled, Tepper relayed his belief in a fundamental truth that would guide the ownership-driven carnage stretching the next three-plus years. All anyone needed to do was listen to what Tepper was saying and trust that he meant it.

“For me, everything is — I really do believe this — this league is set to be an 8-8 league,” Tepper said into the camera. “Everything is fair in this league. So if you have better coaches, better GMs, some advantages with the training, management process, analytics, whatever that is to give you an edge, that’s what you need.”

Tepper then smiled and let out a chuckle.

“And you need a good quarterback,” he said. “That’s what you need, too.”

For anyone who exists inside the holy trinity of the Panthers' franchise under Tepper — general manager, head coach, starting quarterback — this little snippet of recorded history is an instructive moment to be studied. Sean Payton and any other “unicorn” coaching hire should be paying attention. The next assumed franchise quarterback should, too. If general manager Scott Fitterer doesn’t survive this fresh spate of turnover, his replacement should chew on it. Because that moment from Tepper was a team owner speaking a basic football truth about a complicated football pursuit.

His testimony to it has been written over the past three-plus years.

Better facilities? The $800 million Rock Hill practice complex was controversially killed by Tepper and is now embroiled in a bankruptcy fight between his real estate company and the city.

Better coaches? Following Monday’s firing of Matt Rhule, Tepper has now been through two head coaches and is on his second interim head coach with Steve Wilks. And if Wilks doesn’t permanently land the job, Tepper will be setting off to hire his fifth head coach in five seasons as franchise owner.

Better general managers? Fitterer is Tepper’s second, including Marty Hurney, who he inherited with the franchise in 2018 and fired in December 2020. If Tepper pursues a new head coach who wants his own GM, it’s possible he’s on to his third.

Better management process? Tepper has fired both Ron Rivera and Rhule in-season. He also fired Hurney with two games left on the schedule.

And of course, there’s the quest of better quarterbacks, which might be the most fundamentally problematic issue in Tepper’s short tenure. Not one has worked out as hoped. Not Cam Newton or Kyle Allen or Teddy Bridgewater or Sam Darnold. And thus far, not Baker Mayfield, either. That’s five shots at five starters in five years.

That’s hundreds of millions of dollars squandered in the plug-pulling pursuit of better, with nothing tangibly better in the win column to show for it. And you can bet Tepper isn’t chuckling about any part of that.

What failed with Matt Rhule?

Looking back, there is a defense of Tepper’s decision-making when it comes to cutting loose something that’s not working. We’ll get to that in a bit. First, there has to be an accounting of what happened during Rhule’s tenure, which is best described as a journey that ended with a dashboard full of screaming red lights. It wasn’t just one thing. It was many.

That isn’t unusual when you’re merging a new team owner with a first-time NFL head coach and a first-time general manager. Any one of those individuals usually breaks something as they learn. Put three of them together and it can turn into a carnival attraction with glass bumper cars.

Rhule’s tenure had plenty of those moments. There’s little doubt that he’d take back some of the news conference metaphors. Or that he leaves the NFL frustrated over coaching staff mistakes and the inability to craft any kind of consistent offense. When he knew it was the end and he spoke to his team, he described it as a test of adversity, and lessons that would make him better wherever he lands next. Mostly he related that he was sorry he couldn’t get it done for everyone who counted on him. Compared to many NFL exits, it has lacked the bitterness and vitriol that often accompanies failure. That’s because Rhule and virtually everyone else knows that while the percentages of responsibility might differ from one person to the next, nobody is totally blameless.

All of that said, there is one underlying thread of agreement from the people who are most important in the Panthers' equation. Whether it’s Tepper, Fitterer or Rhule, they’d all agree that things might have gone differently if the quarterback spot could have been resolved. For a progression of reasons, it never happened. And that’s also the fault of multiple people and traces back to only a few decisions that undercut the franchise.

3 fundamental decisions at QB that doomed Panthers

First: The Teddy Bridgewater signing was a financial mistake that was hard for Tepper to get over. He listened to Hurney and Rhule, and ended up feeling like he vastly overpaid for nothing more than a borderline average quarterback. The responsibility for that stuck to Rhule and never went away. It impacted a level of trust in Rhule’s judgement.

Second: For all intents and purposes, the Panthers had a trade structure worked out for Matthew Stafford during the 2021 Senior Bowl. Carolina was at the front of the line with a package that centered on the eighth overall pick in the draft. Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes was receptive to doing the deal. And then as suddenly as it looked like the Panthers were in position to close the trade, Carolina hit the breaks. Tepper wanted more information on Stafford’s medical history. In particular, he was concerned about Stafford’s previous back injury and wanted to be certain he wasn’t walking into another bad quarterback situation. That hesitation was exactly what the Los Angeles Rams needed. Rams general manager Les Snead and head coach Sean McVay seized on it to sway Stafford, and within two days Detroit and Los Angeles closed the deal. This might have been the costliest missed opportunity during Rhule’s tenure. In fairness to Tepper, it almost certainly was impacted by Tepper’s level of trust following the Bridgewater miss.

Third: After watching the Rams acquire Stafford, the Panthers were prepared to trade three first-round draft picks and multiple third-rounders to the Houston Texans for Deshaun Watson in February of 2021. This was prior to the civil litigation being filed against Watson in March. It was a fruitless effort regardless. The Texans weren’t taking any trade offers for Watson at the time. Once litigation over sexual assault allegations surfaced, Carolina’s Watson interest evaporated and wouldn’t resurface until March of 2022, when it became apparent Watson wouldn’t face criminal charges.

In totality, all of this was a layering of problems that compounded over time. Bridgewater was a mistake Tepper held against Rhule. That played into part of the team owner’s hesitation over Stafford. And once Stafford was off the table and Watson was facing legal trouble, the remaining options were either veteran reclamation projects or rolling the dice on a rookie who might take years to develop.

While there were a variety of other factors that became issues during Rhule’s tenure — notably an offensive line that fell apart — none complicated or exacerbated the team’s problems more than the inability to solve a QB problem that existed from the very start of Tepper’s ownership. This isn’t a new theme. The biggest NFL regret of the greatest college football coach of all time, Nick Saban, is that he ended up with the wrong injured reclamation project (Daunte Culpepper) rather than the right one (Drew Brees) during his stint with the Miami Dolphins.

Choosing poorly at quarterback undermines teams. Until that changes in Carolina, the fate of the Panthers likely won’t, either.

Tepper might lack patience, but there is a defensible argument

When Tepper bought the Panthers, his résumé in the hedge fund game resonated for good reason. This wasn’t a silver spoon situation, where he made his money thanks to an inherited financial booster seat or because of powerful familial connections. He grew up as a working-class kid from a working-class family. He says he endured physical abuse as a child. He helped pay his way through college at the University of Pittsburgh by working at an art history and architecture museum. Along the way, he learned hard lessons about investing, then toiled for years in various positions involving finance and treasuries. Eventually, he learned to make millions by correctly identifying risk-leveraged and distressed assets.

Early in Tepper’s ownership of the Panthers, one prominent agent remarked of Tepper after their first meeting: “He’s a pretty salty, confident guy. I like him. He’s got balls.”

Viewed through that prism, Tepper’s initial investment in Rhule still makes sense, even looking back through the failure. It was a relatable East Coast guy who had made Temple a realistic threat in college football in a short span, and who then turned around Baylor practically on a dime coming out of one of the worst scandals in college football history. And he was also a hot commodity, drawing feverish interest from multiple NFL teams. Once Tepper had confidence in the investment into Rhule, he was going to close. That’s just how he operated.

Once that investment began to falter, which was basically almost instantaneously with the Bridgewater signing, there was a flip side to Tepper that we should have seen coming. We’ve learned this over the past three years: Once something is not working, Tepper isn't going to drag it around forever. Sometimes moving on from a bad investment takes priority over staring at it and wondering why it broke down. And let’s be honest: Tepper’s decisions on the back end have largely made sense.

Bridgewater has proven to be exactly the low-ceiling starter Tepper thought he was. If he wasn’t, he would have stuck with the Denver Broncos. And you can say the same for the rest of the quarterback merry-go-round of the past five years. Cam Newton’s health was washed. Kyle Allen was a never-was. Sam Darnold was fundamentally flawed and Baker Mayfield might be, too.

As for the two who might have made a difference, start with Watson. Nobody is debating the hesitancy once litigation surfaced or crying about the loss of him in a warped sweepstakes that resulted in one of most stunning trade packages and contracts in NFL history. At best, that was a pursuit with as much downside as upside. Not to mention the reality that we still haven’t seen what Watson will look like after basically two years out of competitive football.

All of which leaves the Stafford moment. If Rhule someday looks back on his stint in Carolina and laments anything, it would be understandable if it was failing to land Stafford when he was in reach. That also doesn’t mean Tepper asked the wrong question. If anything, many franchise owners would be leery about giving up a consequential trade package for a player who had a significant back injury. Especially when they know that a lucrative contract extension was eventually going to be part of the acquisition. Hesitating in the NFL and erring on the side of caution can be costly. It’s how you end up with a fading veteran like Daunte Culpepper rather than a future Hall of Famer like Drew Brees.

That happens sometimes. The key is learning from the mistake.

We’ll see what Tepper ultimately learns from all of this. Much like the future pieces of the puzzle that he courts, he might want to go back and watch the final four minutes of the finale of Carolina’s “All or Nothing” docuseries. Maybe take a moment to ponder that car ride to Rock Hill, when everything seemed full of possibilities. Watch the closing scene, which featured a shot of Tepper riding off into the forest to blaze a path to a headquarters that went horribly wrong.

Better facilities. Better coaches. Better GMs. Better quarterbacks.

NFL history is littered with franchises that found themselves hypnotized by the track forward: focused ahead, insistent on plowing over one mistake after another. All the while, never contemplating whether they might have been opening a hole beneath themselves.

That has been Carolina for the past few years. Now Tepper has to find his way out of it.