Panthers and General Manager Scott Fitterer split ways

Panthers' David Tepper Fires Frank Reich; Is Scott Fitterer Next?

Charlotte: On Monday morning, the Panthers announced the firing of General Manager Scott Fitterer, making history by appointing a coach and general manager in the same offseason for the first time since 2002.

“As we move forward with the new direction for our franchise, I have made the decision that Scott Fitterer will no longer serve as our general manager,” David Tepper, the owner of the Panthers, said. “I appreciate Scott’s efforts and wish the best for him and his family.”

Fitterer joined the group at the beginning of 2021.

The Panthers will start their hunt for his replacement right now, and starting on January 22, they will be permitted to conduct in-person interviews with potential coaches.

The football season for the Carolina Panthers is an unprecedented catastrophe.

David Tepper was supposed to turn the Panthers around with his astute understanding of hedge funds. Rather, he’s responded with a series of snap decisions, and after 11 games, he sacked head coach Frank Reich. From here, where does Carolina proceed with troubled rookie quarterback Bryce Young?

David Tepper’s patience earned him a large chunk of his billions. As a junior analyst at Goldman Sachs and as the head of his own hedge fund, his specialty was spotting troubled assets that were about to recover and then waiting it out. Based on the billions of dollars he made betting on large banks that were on the verge of bankruptcy during the financial crisis to recover—a feat they accomplished after the government bailed them out—Tepper was the highest-earning fund manager in the US in 2009. He has made the most brilliant career decisions by weathering the storm.

Tepper was associated with calm hands even in his initial venture into professional sports ownership; in 2009, he utilized a portion of his riches to acquire a five percent ownership share in the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team that has had three head coaches in the previous fifty years.

All of that is in contrast to his lackluster and impatient ownership of the Carolina Panthers, a team he acquired outright in 2018. A day after a defeat to the Titans that left Tepper yelling profanities as he left the locker room following the game, and eleven games into Reich’s tenure as head coach, Tepper dismissed Reich on Monday. Chris Tabor, the special teams coordinator, will assume the role of interim head coach, Tepper announced. Tabor is the sixth person to fill the top coaching position in Carolina since Tepper acquired the team. In the last 18 months, Tepper has fired four head coaches between the Panthers and Charlotte FC, the Major League Soccer team he also owns. (He did not make any

mention of general manager Scott Fitterer’s potential stay with the organization in his press release, but that too is uncertain.)

Reich is merely the most recent head coach to leave, but the Panthers’ season has been especially terrible this year. A first-round pick in 2024, which the team gave up, is expected to be the first pick in a draft that features highly sought-after quarterback prospects like Caleb Williams and Drake Maye. The Panthers’ blockbuster trade with the Bears to move up for the first pick in the previous year’s draft, which they then used on quarterback Bryce Young, may go down as one of the worst in league history due to youth struggles. With that decision, Carolina dug itself a hole, and the extent of that hole will rely on Reich’s inability to alter the trajectory.

of Young’s career, if Tepper can actually locate that person, and, if he can, whether he’d ultimately stand out of the way.

It’s important to remember that when Tepper acquired the Panthers, the franchise wasn’t exactly in trouble. Following an 11-5 campaign in 2017 that saw them qualify for the playoffs under former head coach Ron Rivera, they were in the offseason. Since then, they have a 30-63 record, which is the second-worst in the NFL. It’s also probably important to point out that, despite his success in investing through patience, Tepper is by no means a stoic person—he is, after all, the guy who purchased the Hamptons property of a Goldman official who failed to give him a promotion.

destroy it and construct a replacement. Tepper’s personality was described as “loud and profane” in a 2010 New York magazine profile, which may have contributed to his denial of the promotion. Tepper talked about his tendency to act hastily when faced with anything that bothers him in that same article. “If someone is an asshole, like a waiter at a restaurant, I think I could just buy this place and fire that guy,” he said.

Tepper’s administration in Carolina appears to be guided by that destructive impulse, so it’s difficult to see how much more likely it is that another coaching change will improve things.

That’s not to argue Reich wasn’t having difficulties. Panthers’ record is 1-10. Reich didn’t make many structural changes to the offensive line, which is ranked 25th in ESPN’s pass block win rate and 31st in run block win rate and hasn’t started the same two guards for more than three weeks of the season. A screen pass thrown several yards behind the line of scrimmage on fourth and six basically concluded Carolina’s defeat to the Titans on Sunday, Reich’s final game.