Meddling, abrasive, impulsive, lousy, and intrusive. Those traits are used to describe a lot of owners in the NFL from the likes of Jimmy Haslam to Jim Irsay, but someone else has tried to earn his righteous spot over the last couple of years. Meet David Tepper, the owner of the Carolina Panthers. When he bought the team for $2.2 billion in 2018, we all knew it was a signal for bigger change that the team definitely needed at the time. Yet, I don’t want to start from there because it would be too long to unpack and it would bore the crap out of all of you. Instead, let’s fast forward to 2020, where Tepper decided to clean house. Head coach Ron Rivera got fired in the middle of the 2019 season after years of underachieving, former MVP Cam Newton and star tight end Greg Olsen were released, and the face of their defense Luke Kuechly surprisingly retired. More followed them out the door and while it was the right thing to do at the time, it was truly the end of what was a fun era in Carolina. 

Tepper needed to do everything to make sure that the Panthers were back on the map. However, his first head coaching hire would be the first of just many irresponsible moves under his watch that just kept sinking this team into a horrendous quicksand. The moment that they hired college coach Matt Rhule, I knew that it was not going to work out. I could understand why they made the move because when you look at his stints with Temple and Baylor were absolutely remarkable. Both programs went from being some of the worst in the nation to surprising winners that bought into his vision and that fought all the way to the very end. There was some hope that he can do the same with the Panthers, but to give him $62 million for seven years was flat out absurd. It was the epitome of a high-risk move because not only were they banking on him to be their savior, but we all know the history of college coaches trying to succeed in the NFL. Some tactics and approaches might work with eighteen to twenty-one year-olds that are doing everything that they can to play, but they won’t always succeed with a bunch of grown adults that are already guaranteed millions of dollars. 

His first season was as bad as you would expect. With Teddy Bridgewater and PJ Walker as the two starting quarterbacks, the team was predictably overpowered in most of their games, and it was especially a lost year when Christian McCaffrey only played three games due to ankle and shoulder injuries. Even with rookies Derrick Brown and Jeremy Chinn coming onto the scene, the Panthers finished 5-11 and Tepper ended up firing general manager Marty Hurney with two games left to play. The issues were laid out on full display for us to watch. The offense didn’t have a true starting quarterback, and even worse without their best player.. The defense showed flashes, but with how young and inexperienced they were on all three levels, they predictably got torched in a majority of their games and could never fit well into their schemes.

To start the offseason in 2021, new Panthers general manager Scott Fitterer made a big splash by acquiring quarterback Sam Darnold from the New York Jets for a pretty big haul. Carolina had to give up a sixth round pick, a future second round pick, and a future fourth round pick for their “reclamation project” in hopes that he would no longer see ghosts any time that he stepped on the football field. The expectation for Tepper was that Darnold would be the next Ryan Tannehill, freed from the depths of hell that Adam Gase created to show the potential he had at USC. Through the first three games of the season, it looked like it was actually going to work for Carolina. The Panthers were 3-0 and Darnold was a pretty big reason why. He averaged 296 passing yards in those first starts, scoring a total of six times with just one interception thrown. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a mirage as the Panthers lost five out of their next same games, ultimately getting benched after a three-interception performance against the New England Patriots in Week 9.

At that point, the Panthers were 4-5 but Tepper didn’t want the fanbase to riot for another mid-season collapse due to quarterback inefficiencies. Cam Newton is a free agent and is hoping for another chance to start in the NFL so let’s go pick him up and excite the fanbase by bringing back the best quarterback they’ve had in their history. Even though he didn’t start the following week against the Arizona Cardinals, Newton scored two touchdowns in that game and announced to the world that he was back. He ended up starting the next five games for Carolina, but instead of saving their season, Cam sent it further into the toilet. He couldn’t push the ball down the field, he had no mobility in the pocket whatsoever, and looked like a hollow shell of what he was in the past. It was so bad that in their Week 16 matchup against the Bucs, Matt Rhule thought it was a wise idea to play both him AND Darnold. It was a predictable blowout because the Panthers were just flat out lifeless and dead at that point. Their offensive coordinator got fired in the middle of the season, and for the third straight year, Carolina could not win more than five games. 

The 2022 offseason was the same script for Tepper. Land a top ten draft pick, invest their free agency money in standard depth options, and try to make a big splash for a quarterback. Darnold failed to redeem himself and officially became a bust, but do you know who else needs his career saved? Baker Mayfield. It only cost them a future conditional sixth round pick so this is a steal for a number one overall pick that had success with the Cleveland Browns, before he tried to play through a torn labrum that almost derailed his whole career. Head coach Matt Rhule was on really hot ice, as well as the other team, because they could not afford to go down the tubes once again with how aggressive they are every offseason. I’ll cut this part of the story short.

Quarterback play continued to plague the Panthers earlier in the season as Mayfield started the first five games of the season with four touchdowns, four interceptions, and just one game where he threw for over 230 yards. Rhule got fired after a 1-4 start, not even three years into that ginormous contract that he got in 2020. Mayfield ended up getting benched for PJ Walker, and he eventually got released before the month of December. Even worse, Christian McCaffrey got traded to the San Francisco 49ers, the only reason why the Panthers were relevant in the first place. You might hear all of this and think that they were the worst team in the league, but that was surprisingly the opposite.

The Panthers went 6-6 under interim head coach Steve Wilks, which sounds pretty mediocre and pedestrian, but it is miles above better than what this team has been through over the past few seasons. D’Onta Foreman stepped up huge as the starting running back, finishing that year with over 900 yards and five touchdowns on over 200 carries, the best numbers he put up in his career. Sam Darnold started the final six games of the season and threw a healthy seven touchdown passes to just three interceptions! Even if they missed the playoffs and weren’t built well enough to beat Tom Brady for the NFC South, it was a strong finish for a team that had no expectations at the beginning of the season. But what happened in 2023 was when Tepper really proved to be just a completely incompetent owner.

Instead of bringing Steve Wilks back to be the full-time head coach, Tepper wanted to make a bigger splash and he wanted it to be his decision. The Carolina Panthers are always about “resurrecting careers,” so let’s go for Frank Reich and make sure that he does for us what Doug Pederson did for the Jacksonville Jaguars. But that was not the biggest surprise move the Panthers made. The Chicago Bears landed with the first overall pick in the NFL Draft but were hoping to trade down for it because they were comfortable with their starting quarterback Justin Fields. Carolina has been in need for a new face of the franchise since Cam Newton departed, and they were the lucky recipients of the pick, but what they gave up was ridiculous. Two first round picks and two second round picks were expected since Chicago had plenty of leverage, but what threw everyone over the top was the Panthers including DJ Moore in the package. The type of receiver that every quarterback would love to have as their number one option. Even though the Panthers got the first overall selection, the Bears were the overall winners because of what they got in return.

Predictably, Carolina drafted Bryce Young with their first overall selection, which seemed like a right choice at the time. When you looked at the roster on the paper and the coaching staff in place, they were not going to make too much noise, but nobody expected the type of year that the Panthers had. The only good thing that happened to Carolina besides the two wins that they got was that it ended. Bryce Young had one of the most forgettable rookie seasons in NFL history, and while his statistics look flat out awful, any quarterback could have completely failed with this type of team. Their big free-agent signing Miles Sanders flopped with just 432 rushing yards and getting passed on the depth chart by Chuba Hubbard. The only receiver that was reliable was a 33 year old Adam Thielen, who was not even close to having the type of impact that DJ Moore had for years. The offensive line was not only in disarray, but they didn’t have an identity whatsoever, and they gave up the the second most sacks in the league. Their offense was so terrible that play-calling duties went back and forth between Reich and offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, before both of them were kicked out the door after a 1-10 start. The Panthers had the worst season in their entire history since 2001, and the only thing that Tepper was known for that year was throwing a drink at a fan near the end of the season. The fans were apathetic to the point that tickets were as low as forty-five cents. General manager Scott Fitterer was fired and the Panthers were once again a doormat that got stepped on with heavy amounts of mud.

What makes it even worse is what happened to the quarterback taken right after Young at number two. Not only did CJ Stroud have an outstanding rookie season, but he lifted the Houston Texans back into the playoffs after years of being in purgatory. The numbers were better, the confidence was at an all-time high, and the team followed behind him. You might say that Carolina whiffed with another draft selection, but in my opinion, Stroud would have failed just as much as Young did because of the terrible situation. 

It has now been six years since David Tepper bought the team and all they have done is fail time and time again. Any time that things get somewhat shaky, he is never afraid to pull the fire trigger and get rid of anybody that might be a distraction. With new hires Dave Canales and Dan Morgan, Tepper will now be going through six different head coaches, three different general managers, and ten new starting quarterbacks. Their three best players Christian McCaffrey, DJ Moore, and Brian Burns have all been traded. Frank Reich is supposed to be paid $36 million over the next six years, and the Panthers are allegedly refusing to pay out the rest of Matt Rhule’s contract that Tepper never should have thrown at him in the first place. They have landed high draft pick after high draft pick, quality free agent after free agent, and all of them have grossly failed and underachieved.

As for the players that left, they ended up having bigger success. After back-to-back injury riddled seasons in 2020 and 2021, Christian McCaffrey re-emerged as the best running back in football when he got traded to San Francisco. Just last year, he won Offensive Player of the Year with over twenty touchdowns and he was a huge reason why they were able to reach the Super Bowl. DJ Moore might not be on the best team right now, but he is still proving to be an extremely valuable number one option, finishing the season with over 1300 receiving yards and nine total touchdowns. We don’t know how Brian Burns is going to do with the New York Giants, but the same team that denied two first round picks from the Rams to acquire him is now somewhat comfortable with getting a second and two fifth round selections. 

This is what the Panthers have become since they lost to the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50. They might have been a hopeful and promising franchise with outstanding players in their history, but they keep getting screwed over by management every time things are heading into a positive direction. I don’t blame the fanbase for not caring anymore or showing up whatsoever because why waste your time watching this atrocity every single week? The only way that this cycle ever ends is that Tepper stops trying to get in the way of football operations and actually let everybody do their own damn jobs, but those temper tantrums are never going to go away if the Panthers continue to rot like this. I wish Dave Canales and Dan Morgan the best of luck in trying to save this franchise, but as long as David Tepper continues to operate this way as the owner, then they are going to be no different than the Washington Wizards.