Cam Defends His Coach: 'Last Time I Checked Coach Rhule Wasn't Out There Playing'

Panthers QB Cam Newton backs up his head coach.

Sunday evening, the Carolina Panthers were officially eliminated from playoff contention after a 32-6 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, dropping their record to 5-10 on the season.

As expected, fans inside Bank of America Stadium boo'd the team for much of the second half. The fan base is clearly upset with head coach Matt Rhule as they believe he is not the right man for this job. If we're going solely off of wins and losses, it's hard to argue that the fans are wrong. Rhule is now 10-21 as the head coach of the Carolina Panthers but the process to turn this team around was never going to be easy nor quick.

"I don’t know that anyone wants to hear that, nor should they," Rhule said. "I just think when you look at most teams that start over. Like last year, you guys would call it a rebuild and I would always try not to use that word. I would be like, well you know we are building. But when you walk in the building and Luke Kuechly leaves, and James
Bradberry leaves and all these people and you are like, okay who is left over? It is
like, have you ever seen the Will Smith Fresh Prince of Bel-Air where he is kind of
looking around the house? A lot of people left. And it is like okay we have got to
start over. I hate it for our fans that we are not winning. I know how much they want to win. I hear it from them. I hear you. But when Dave hired me, he said I want it done right. I want it done for the long term. I want you to build it with young players that grow. So, when I look out on the field and I see the Jeremy Chinns and the Stanley Thomas-Olivers and the Myles Hartsfields and all these guys. Sometimes you are not ready to win with a ton of first- and second-year players. But they are growing up in this system. They are growing up with the way that we do things. I believe we have seen flashes of what we can be. We saw flashes at Arizona. I think when you start over and as people have written articles, you didn’t have a great 2019 draft and we lost a lot of good players. It takes a couple drafts to get there. So, I don’t say any of that as excuses. I say that as this is the plan. The plan was never, hey year two, even when we won the first three games was like man we have so many things we have to fix. And so, to go into this year and lose Christian, we said hey we will go as far as we play well on the O-Line and the quarterback position. We have played three quarterbacks. That is nothing against any of them. We don’t have stability there because of the way the year has gone. Offensive line wise, we have not had stability there. So, I see why I see people would say, hey it is not working. You are losing. And some of these games like 32-6, it doesn’t even look like it is close. I completely understand that. But what we did was we made a decision to build it from the ground up with young players and young players make a lot of mistakes sometimes. We brought in targeted veterans. I think we will hit free agency and the draft and we will resign a bunch of the players who are here who have been through it for a couple years for us. I will finish with this. I think you look at the success that some players in this have. Because when you come from college, okay is he a college coach, is he a college coach. I see the success Curtis Samuel had. Career year for us and then he went and signed well. Manhertz. These guys were good players beforehand, but I see the guys that are coming up right now that are going to be big dollar free agents for us. A lot of guys are having a lot of individual success having their best years playing for us. If you just keep doing that and keep adding the right pieces then eventually you have a really good team. We have some key areas that we have to fix. Whether that is to coach them better. To do a better organizationally. But I believe it is one-thousand percent working, I just know no one can see it and I apologize. As I tell our team all the time, it took Jay-Z seven years. Seven years. He had to start his own agency to become famous, to become an overnight sensation. It takes time. But I will finish but saying I respect the fight. I respect CJ Saunders waking up this morning and being like oh you guys need me I will be at the hotel in five minutes. We have a good group. There are some good healthy things happening. Got to win some games." 

For whatever reason, a narrative has been created over the past couple of weeks that Rhule's relationship with quarterback Cam Newton is not in a good place. Week after week, Rhule mentions how much he loves Newton's presence, his work ethic, his competitiveness, and just who he is as a person. Following Sunday's loss to Tampa, Newton stuck up for his head coach after fans were chanting for him to be fired.

"Coach Rhule is a great coach. I heard the boos, I heard the chants and stuff like that, but last time I checked Coach Rhule wasn’t out there playing. It was told to me early on this week about playing two quarterbacks. Did I approve of it? That’s not even a thought. As a player, you play. A coach, he coaches. If he deems that that was the best for this team to win, then its for me to swallow my pride and get on board, and I did that."

I've never sensed any sort of beef between Rhule and Newton. To be honest, I believe their relationship may be even stronger than Rhule/Darnold. Earlier in the season, Rhule told the media that he didn't really know much about Darnold outside of football until he finally had a sit down with him. Whereas Newton and Rhule meet one on one once a week.

The fact of the matter is this team is not ready to win. As I've stated approximately a million and one times this season, the Panthers have the youngest roster in the NFL and when you have that coupled with no offensive line or no quarterback, this is exactly what you get. Rhule and the front office placed their focus on the defensive side of the ball during the first two offseasons and it worked. They drafted some serious talents like S Jeremy Chinn, DT Derrick Brown, and CB Jaycee Horn while signing key free agents such as Haason Reddick, A.J. Bouye. Not to mention the acquisitions of corners Stephon Gilmore and CJ Henderson. Now, it's the offense's turn and Rhule knows it. 

"As you guys know we used a lot of draft picks and capital on pass rushers and the d-line. Guys on the o-line, a lot of guys are out. Matt Paradis is out. These guys had to step up. Pat Elflein went out. Tecklenberg stepped in today. I can’t comment on how anyone played without seeing the tape. They will be the first to say that giving up seven sacks you aren’t going to win any games really doing that. I don’t want to point at any one thing. Obviously, wasn’t good enough. Defense usually plays well enough.

"Like I said earlier this week, that team struggled for several years and they acquired a lot of pieces and then the quarterback showed up and Gronk showed up, Antonio Brown showed up and now they are one of the best teams in the league. We are not them yet. We are aspiring to be them. We are trying to add pieces as we go and develop guys and draft guys and sign guys and we hope that we can get there. It is painful while it’s there. I understand everyone's frustration. I’ll say this, the people at Tampa Bay were frustrated two years ago and three years ago. But they stayed true to what they did and it is working out."

Although it hasn't been a great two years under Matt Rhule, it makes no sense to fire the guy before he hits year three of his tenure which has been the year where he gets things turned around. If he go gets a quarterback and reshapes the offensive line, yet still has the same results, then calling for his firing would be warranted.

The Panthers will finish the regular season on the road at New Orleans next week and then at Tampa Bay.

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