The Carolina Panthers under head coach Matt Rhule had a record of 11-27. They are 1-4 this season, and after an embarrassing 37-15 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, owner David Tepper made the decision to relieve Rhule of his duties. Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network was first with the news.
Defensive Passing Game Coordinator and Secondary Coach Steve Wilks, who had a 3-13 record as the Arizona Cardinals’ head coach in 2018, will take over as interim head coach.
It was said that team owner David Tepper wanted to be patient with Rhule, if for no other reason to show Rhule’s eventual replacement that patience was the order of the day. But there was no other way for this to go. The statistic that had gone viral in recent days was that the Panthers under Rhule were 1-27 when the opponent scored at least 17 points.
That’s simply not acceptable for a coach who was supposed to be the team’s offensive savior based on his work at Temple and Baylor. But Rhule famously fired former offensive coordinator Joe Brady, the man behind Joe Burrow’s 60-touchdown season at LSU, because Rhule didn’t like Brady’s run-pass balance. The eventual decision to bring in Ben McAdoo in 2022 has produced predictable results. The Panthers had scored 93 points on the season, one of the lowest totals in the NFL. They came into the San Francisco game ranked 31st in Offensive DVOA; only the Indianapolis Colts were worse.