I think Frank wanted out of there anyway

I mean, I kinda feel bad for him.

Though on the other hand, the hand wringing of "look how quick another team was to hire the head coach the Colts fired" from some looks pretty funny now.

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profoo...lts-right-away

The fact that Reich landed on his feet without sitting out a season becomes a potential referendum on the decision to fire him in the first place.

Yeah, quite the referendum there.

There's a lot to digest here, and a lot of people are saying it's Bryce Young, or it's the terrible OL, or a combination of both, some are saying the owner is a maniac and it's on him because he wanted Young over Stroud, some are even saying he was meddling in playing time...

Look at it from this vantage point though. Frank is the 1st coach since 1970= 53 years, to be fired mid season back to back. That's over 50 years of some real trash coaches, 50 years!

Look at the similarities to what we saw here last year. Everyone was complaining about how bad the QB play was and how the OL was atrocious. Remember this team just could not put any points on the board, the QB was holding the ball over and over and over and we were all frustrated as hell by it.

Man, it's the same exact thing in Carolina this year, watch the game and read the comments, it is a mirror image of the Colts last year.

Look back to last year, Carolina was a relatively solid team which battled for the playoffs even after losing their best player to trade.

Jump forward to this year, the Colts are a relatively solid team which is battling for the playoffs even after losing their best player (at least viewed as their most dynamic potential to shift games) to injury.

This year, without what looked like one of the scariest offensive weapons to ever hit the league, with a QB with a pea shooter arm, with backup linemen and seemingly no real development of a guy like Pierce, with no meaningful contribution from TE's that were supposed to be a bad ass group, with our all world RB missing the first 3 games and sort of babied in his first 2 back, through all of this- this team is putting up points. We rank 11th in scoring- just behind Kansas City!

There are certainly factors beyond Frank that contribute to the Panthers being shit. However if you objectively look at it, Frank Reich as a HC has been doing something magnificently wrong. His offensive system seems to have just completely collapsed. Not sure why, not sure how, but it is nearly impossible to dispute this to be the case. I am apt to believe it is overly reliant on perfection being necessary for success, overly coached, calling plays predicated on exact defensive schemes and when the scheme isn't what the play was called against the whole model breaks down- and Young is not good enough as a rookie to improvise (and may never be)- and I don't think Ryan was capable of doing so either at the late juncture of his career.

I don't see this as being a Bryce Young, OL, or Tepper issue, I see this as being a reflection on Frank just not being able to be a head coach in this league.

To be fair how many head coaches were fired mid season then got another coaching job right away?

I actually kinda feel for the guy. He obviously isn't a good coach, but there have been a lot worse that were never canned mid season (Clappy for example).

I definitely feel bad for him....I never hated the guy, just never felt he was a good head coach. They have too much invested in Young and he was not developing under Reich! Bet they bring in a guy with a history of developing young talent....

I heard a great breakdown on Frank's failures this afternoon, think it was on 1430.

The bottom line in this analysts perspective, and I think it was a PFF guy who was talking, is Frank puts far too much emphasis on the Oline and the ability to win 1:1 battles. When it works, his offense is very good, but when it doesn't, things quickly go south, especially when there are injuries (every damn Oline has injuries!). He said Frank does not like to help, does not like zone blocking, and does not like to use pre-snap motion to diagnose alignment and adjust the scheme. Olinemen are on islands a lot and if they get beat, the QB is the victim. This all seems to check out thinking back to some of the things we saw here. What was it the Rivers year where we had effectively the same OL all season, and in turn a nice year out of our QB? Seems like recently we've had very little Oline continuity and we've had terrible QB play. So in his analysis very hard to say if Young is / is not the guy, because Frank's Oline model has given him no change to succeed (and implying neither Wentz or Ryan had a chance either).

BTW he praised Steichen, talked about how we do a lot of hand offs in the blocking game and as such we don't need to have individually great Olinemen and is one of the reasons we've been able to succeed (he was using points per game as the measure) vs being so inept last year.

Also, he said Steichen should be in coach of the year running for what he has been able to do with the lack of dynamic play makers on the team.

Chiefs fans would kill for the Colts WR and RB rooms.

It is striking that this is almost the exact same cast of charactors manning the offense as last year. They look like a professional team this year, not so much last year. Nobody is quitting on the team. It is a nice change.

In an interview not long after his dismissal, Reich indicated that this might be the end of his coaching career.

He didn't want to say he was "definitely" finished, but that's the direction he was headed for now. Perhaps with a little time away, he might get the coaching itch again.

Otherwise, he might be OK with devoting more time to his kNot today charity, or finding a new church to minister again or spending more time with his grandchildren, or some combination of those three.

His contract was guaranteed, so he should get the full amount of his 4 year contract with the Panthers.

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sp...282370333.html