Matt Rhule On The Hot Seat After Another Panthers Loss

Matt Rhule is starting to feel the heat. Life hasn’t been easy for the Carolina Panthers throughout these last few years, and he’s been a major reason why. Fans are beginning to call for his job after yet another loss in the regular season.  

Matt Rhule Takes Questions

Rhule is currently in his third year with the Panthers. This current season isn’t going well. He’s won just one out of his first four games. The performance against the Arizona Cardinals last night was a low point. They were nearly doubled in total yards and converted just two out of their 10 total third downs on the afternoon. Quarterback play seems to be the biggest center point and Rhule made sure to address that after the game. He was asked about the fans raining boos down on them. To which he replied, “They want to see good offense and be entertained and it’s not happening. I get it.” 

Reporters then started to fire questions away at Rhule about potential openings in the college scene in case he wanted to go back down. He declined to comment on any of those question. He also didn’t have an answer for why the Panthers didn’t attempt to get Jimmy Garoppolo from the San Francisco 49ers. Baker Mayfield is currently the best and only option that Carolina has. Especially with Sam Darnold out with an ankle injury. An injury that he still isn’t ready to return from yet. 

The biggest and most important quote from Rhule on the afternoon was when he said, “We just need Baker to settle down and play within the scheme. That is something he believes in; we all believe in.” Rhule could be addressing the quarterback position to either save his job or to actually pinpoint the focal point of the problem at hand. One thing is for sure though, neither Darnold or Mayfield are putting up even decent performances at the position. The mix of this with potential poor coaching could make it ten times worse. 

Panthers Running Out Of Ideas

Carolina knows that if they have nowhere else to turn but Darnold at quarterback, they aren’t in the best position possible. At least their defense is still considered the best part of their team right now.  

As for Rhule, he doesn’t want to talk about the possibility of himself getting fired sooner rather than later. He was asked about his job security, to which he said, “If I make this about me, I’m not being the type of coach I want to be. Our team will respond. We always do.”

Well, we haven’t quite seen the response from them much this year, but at this point, anything is likely to be better than what we’ve gotten in 2022. Changes could be coming to this team, and fast, if they don’t start to turn it around. There could be some bold coaching decisions made from Rhule in the next few weeks to try and give his group a spark as quickly as possible.