Professional football players have long declared that in addition to National Football League, NFL also stands for “Not For Long.”
Thanks to devastating injuries, the short leashes of impatient coaches and general managers or mere numbers games, playing careers can end in the blink of an eye.
That “Not For Long” moniker should also apply to head coaching careers, especially given some recent firings.
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Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper on Monday fired Frank Reich after just 11 games and less than 24 hours after his team fell to 1-10 with a 17-10 loss to the Titans. The Panthers also fired quarterbacks coach Josh McCown and running backs coach Duce Staley.
But Reich, a former successful head coach (with the Colts) and offensive coordinator (with the Chargers and Eagles), shouldn’t feel lonely. He’s just the latest casualty in a league run by wealthy men and women who can be strong in ego but weak in patience.
GO DEEPER
Panthers' anemic offense and 1-10 record led to only choice — firing Frank Reich
Reich became the third head coach in three years who failed to make it through a full season in his first year with a team. Last year, the Broncos fired Nathaniel Hackett after just 15 games. In 2021, the Jaguars let Urban Meyer go after 13 games.
Josh McDaniels, whom the Raiders hired in 2022 only to fire him earlier this month after a 3-5 start, made it 25 games on the job. However, in the last 12 seasons, a dozen coaches have been fired after just one season or less.
Some of the one-and-done firings were justifiable, others were not. But all reflect a common truth: Most NFL owners have no clue what they’re doing.
For all of their business success, many NFL owners have no idea how to run their teams, and in general they’re awful when it comes to hiring head football coaches. That’s why we see so many ill-fitting marriages, such fruitless efforts and short tenures.
Yes, there are some owners who know how to evaluate talent or can identify potential coaches with strong leadership, communication, organizational, motivational and strategic skills.
But the majority? Shoot. Most owners are nothing more than billionaires playing real-life fantasy football. They guess here, follow popular opinion there. Then they roll the dice and hope they’ve gotten it right.
Tepper perfectly embodies the problem with NFL owners. The highly successful hedge fund manager had learned a little about the league during nine years as a minority owner of the Steelers. But that knowledge obviously was limited, because in his six seasons as the Panthers’ majority owner, Carolina has exhibited not one ounce of the stability and shrewd decision-making for which the Steelers are known.
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Instead, Tepper now is looking for his fourth head coach since 2019. He just tabbed special teams coach Chris Tabor as his second interim head coach in two seasons and his third in five years.
In 2019, Tepper sacked Ron Rivera (5-7 at the time) and had defensive backs coach Perry Fewell man the helm the final four games. That winter, Tepper lured Matt Rhule away from Baylor, yet 38 games later, Tepper fired Rhule (1-4 in 2022) and promoted defensive coordinator Steve Wilks to interim head coach. Wilks coaxed a dysfunctional and talent-devoid squad to a 6-6 finish, but that wasn’t good enough in Tepper’s eyes to warrant the full-time head coaching position. So he hired Reich, whom Colts owner Jim Irsay had fired nine games into the 2022 season, and entrusted the former longtime NFL backup quarterback with the development of the top overall pick in the draft, which Carolina acquired via trade with Chicago.
Tepper said he hired Reich in part because he wanted an offensive-minded coach married to that prized rookie quarterback, which wound up being Alabama’s Bryce Young. The owner didn’t want to risk hiring a defensive-minded head coach, whose offensive coordinator would shine and then promptly leave for a head coach job elsewhere and stunt the young quarterback’s development.
But here Tepper finds himself, pulling the plug on Reich’s tenure in-season and gambling on Young’s future regardless.
Tepper has charged Tabor with keeping things afloat. Jim Caldwell will be a special assistant to offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, who will take over play-calling opportunities, and defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero will remain in his role.
Tepper could have named Brown or Evero, both regarded in NFL circles as future head coaches, as the interim so they could audition for the permanent job. But he clearly intends to go outside for this position once again.
Scott Fitterer has been Panthers GM since January 2021. (Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)Truthfully, though, it matters little who is the interim. Three rival NFL front-office executives said they weren’t surprised Reich and his staff struggled to produce wins this season, because the Panthers’ roster is so thin on talent. Speaking on condition of anonymity so they could talk freely about another team, they also questioned how general manager Scott Fitterer has kept his job. Fitterer constructed Carolina’s feeble roster and helped Reich make the decision to draft Young over C.J. Stroud, the Texans quarterback who may win Offensive Rookie of the Year. Some believed the more prudent decision would have been to keep Reich another year while replacing Fitterer, to see if a new front office could fortify the roster and give Reich and Young a better chance to succeed.
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Tepper’s mistakes continue to mount, but by nature of the job, he has no one to answer to. He’ll simply pay Reich not to work and this offseason will write another check for a new coach with no assurances that said hire will fare any better than his two previous selections.
It’s the way of an NFL owner.
We saw it happen in Denver, where the Broncos hired Hackett, who had a limited track record but a good relationship with Aaron Rodgers, who at the time faced an uncertain future with the Packers. The Hackett move backfired badly: Rodgers remained in Green Bay for another season, and Denver slogged through a year of ineptitude.
We saw a similarly botched hiring the year prior in Jacksonville, too, as Shad Khan hired Meyer for his Jaguars, only to watch the celebrated former college coach create a toxic culture and commit one embarrassment after another.
The other one-and-done coaches in the last 12 years:
Each time, the owners erred in a couple of key areas: either they made terrible evaluations regarding those coaches’ abilities to connect with their players and elevate their organizations, or they didn’t adequately support and position those coaches for success by giving them time and resources to turn the teams around.
And, so, the futility — and the coaching carousel — continues.
It’s rare, but most NFL teams would be much better off if their owners entrusted a sharp team president to run the organization, including the hiring of the general managers and head coaches and selection of players. If they could keep their fingers out of things and let the true experts work together without the threat of meddling or fear-induced power struggles, then maybe, just maybe, the owners would receive a greater return on their investments.
But “that’s no fun,” one AFC front-office exec said, when asked why so few owners utilize such an approach.
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You know what is fun, though? Winning. And winners are rarely built by owners who overstep boundaries and have little to no patience. History never lies. Owners who can’t get out of their way simply spin their wheels — for decades and maybe even generations.
Time will tell if Tepper eventually takes a backseat after hiring someone to clean up his mess. But the history, both in Charlotte and beyond, isn’t kind — not to NFL head coaches, not to players and certainly not to long-suffering fans.
(Top photos of David Tepper and Frank Reich: Grant Halverson and Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
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