Posted on 01/27/2023 5:50:46 AM PST by Red Badger
The Carolina Panthers have hired a new head coach.
The team announced Thursday on Twitter that it has chosen Frank Reich to lead the ballclub for the 2023-2024 NFL season.
Reich’s hiring comes as a bit of a surprise considering the Indianapolis Colts recently fired him as their head coach back in November after a 23-point loss to the New England Patriots. He was 3-5-1 at the time of his firing, according to Pro Football Reference.
Carolina’s management is doing Steve Wilks wrong here by picking Reich over him. Wilks took over the Panthers as interim head coach after Carolina fired head coach Matt Rhule over a poor 1-4 start to the season. Wilks impressively managed to get the Panthers to play their best football once he took over. In 12 games, he coached the squad to a 6-6 record and nearly got the team into the postseason after a drama-filled campaign.
In Wilks’ first game as head coach, he needed to send diva wide receiver Robbie Anderson into the locker room early before the Panthers’ week six game against the Los Angeles Rams concluded because Anderson got into the face of his position coach Joe Dailey for no good reason.
Wilks also had to deal with Carolina’s week one starting quarterback Baker Mayfield’s request to be released from the team in the thick of the Panthers’ playoff hunt. Despite the problems, Wilks started three different quarterbacks in his 12-game stint as HC and still had the Panthers on the cusp of a playoff berth.
It seemed like Wilks had to deal with a lot of stuff as Carolina’s head coach that he shouldn’t have had to put up with. That said, for him to coach the Panthers to a 6-6 record with all that ensued was respectable and worthy enough to keep his job.
Reich was Carolina’s first starting quarterback when the team entered the league in 1995, according to NFL insider Adam Schefter. It’s really cool to see his football career come full circle, but at the same time, I hope coach Wilks gets another opportunity to lead an NFL team again, because he deserves it.
NFL PING!.................
I don’t know these coaches, as I don’t follow the NFL all that closely. But I would tell who was black and who wasn’t before I even looked.
Poetic justice would be to have Indy hire Wilks and have a better season than Reich at Carolina.
They’z dun did me wrongz…
Carolina doing what they do best.
Loud mouth, Steven A. Smith of espn, will be screaming racism because the coach being hired is white and the one not, is black.
Amazing is the agent for Wilks. White guy who is an expert on racism when it’s profitable. Who does he think he is Al Sharpton?
That’s the head coach’s job.
Panthers ownership is free to hire whomever they want. Period.
Steven A. ........... I know what the ‘A’ stands for...................
“It seemed like Wilks had to deal with a lot of stuff as Carolina’s head coach that he shouldn’t have had to put up with.”
And that’s why the Panthers selected Reich. He would know how to deal with that “stuff.”
49ers hired Mike Singletary after Nolan was fired. Didn’t work. Carolina has the right to get it right based on their own thinking. There are plenty of black coaches out there and race baiters will always be around. Aren’t you all getting tired of this?
Frank Reich is a good coach.
Frank is most famous for being the backup quarterback to Jim Kelly and the Buffalo Bills in the 1990s. He orchestrated the largest come from behind victory in NFL playoff history.
The Bills ended up beating the Houston Oilers in the AFC Wildcard game.
He also was a very good college quarterback at Maryland.
He was always very cool under pressure.
Oh yeah I’m tired of it - every time there is a hire of a white as a head coach we hear this same litany. The talking heads can all FOAD.
Good luck to Reich with Carolina. I don’t know why things went so wrong in Indy. They tied with Houston in Game 1 - and it was downhill from there, with the nadir being allowing Minnesota to come back from 33 down to beat them (although Reich was gone by then).
Sounds like Wilks burnished his resumé in twelve games with the Panthers and will land on his feet somewhere.
Black men, as a group, make up around 6% of the US population, yet account for some 70% of NFL players. Black men are overrepresented in the NFL. If it’s understandable that based on talent, black players populate so many slots, why isn’t it also understandable that their coaching talent is properly related to the number of black men as coaches?
Reich was also the starting quarterback for the Panthers when the franchise began play in 1995. He’s a good man and well respected. Reich is offense minded, and is expected to develop either Matt Corral or an upcoming draft pick at QB. Team is only down to QBs Corral and Jacob Eason, as two others are free agents.
He was 3-13 in his previous head coaching gig with Arizona. Reich is 40-33-1 with two playoff appearances.
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