The actual definition of “rebuild” is to build once again after it has been damaged or destroyed. There’s little doubt the Carolina Panthers fall into those descriptions.
Even so, new head coach Matt Rhule prefers a different word when describing his task at hand in generating a winner.
“I’ve never used the word, ‘rebuild,’ he said. “I’ve just said, ‘We’ve got to build.’
And therein lies the thought process of Rhule, who just gained his first win last Sunday as coach of the Panthers. He doesn’t want to try and replicate what once was, but rather construct his own creation.
Rhule, 45, has the task of trying to make Carolina a consistent winner, something that hasn’t been accomplished in the 26-year history of the franchise. Never has the team had back-to-back winning seasons.
For new team owner David Tepper, making the playoffs every couple of years is simply unacceptable.
Rhule, who has a history of taking dormant college programs and turning them into winners in a relatively short time, is here to try and change that.
“When they hire you to do a job and you come in and look at it, and the last two years you’ve had losing streaks and in the last two years you haven’t won, you say to yourself, ‘OK, we’re not where we want to be.’ It’s nothing bigger than that,” he said. “It’s just the franchise is not where it wants to be, so we have to build.”
Notice he didn’t say, ‘rebuild.’
The building process involves having your own design with your own specific materials. Rhule is playing the role of a master craftsman that knows exactly how he wants to put things together to have the end result that he wants.
And part of that means getting rid of some of the former players and starting with new talent.
“When you coach players or as a fan when you watch them, you love them, you want them to be around forever, but you have to do what you have to do,” Rhule said. “For me its’s a couple of stages: You want to make sure you have the right people. You want to go get the right people, the right staff, the right support staff and the right players.
“The second step is establishing the foundation to what you believe in. People win a lot of different ways. We want to be a tough, hardworking and competitive group. And then you get the football right. The football’s not right yet. We’re working at it. But I think it’s really those three stages. Then you want to become a close team; you want to become a team that plays for each other.”
While Rhule had major success in the college ranks, the NFL is littered with former collegiate coaches that flamed out in the pros. Nick Saban, Steve Spurrier, Lou Holtz, Bobby Petrino, Chip Kelly and Greg Schiano are just a few that failed miserably at the next level.
Regardless, Panthers long snapper J.J. Jansen is the elder statesmen on the team in terms of having played the most years for Carolina. He joined the franchise in 2009, and he’s playing for this third head coach with the organization.
He said had nary a worry about Rhule coming in as head coach even though he’d only had one year of coaching in the NFL, which was in 2012 with the New York Giants.
“Football is football,” said Jansen, a Pro Bowler and former All-Pro. “The process of being a head coach, whether it’s little league, high school, college or the NFL, they all build a team and put a group of guys together.
“As a guy who has been with some other head coaches, you see all of the elements of a really good head coach the minute you spend five minutes with him. He’s a football man and he cares deeply about the game and he cares deeply about people, and I think that’s why you’re seeing the comradery here building and building and building.
“The advantage that I think Coach Rhule has had that I think gets overlooked … we get to benefit from the aspect that he’s had to do this with two other programs, so he knows what works and what doesn’t.”
There is a common theme with Rhule’s tenure at Temple and Baylor and one that he expects to bring to Carolina.
“The gratifying things about those places is the guys that won a championship were the same guys we didn’t win very many games with,” he said. “So, we came here and we tried to get the best roster we could and the best guys we could and I like our team. They play hard and they practice hard. …
Winning with the Panthers could take some time and there’s likely going to be some growing pains for Rhule and his staff, but it likely won’t be anything that he hasn’t already experienced in college or any worse than what he’s already had to handle with the COVID-19 situation.
It’s also going to take patience from the fanbase, which can be a challenge all of its own. Nevertheless, Rhule truly believes it’s only a matter of time before Tepper, the staff, the players and the fans are excited with this team.
“I just think we’re building and just trying to get better and better and better,” Rhule said. “My biggest goal all year has been I wanted this to be a team that people said, ‘I like watching the way that they play.’ It’s not always perfect and we turn the ball over against the Buccaneers, but we play hard. We don’t quit and we play together. …
“I look at people in North Carolina and I look at people in South Carolina, when they pay money to go to a restaurant to watch us play and someday when they get back in the stand, I want them to be proud of the way that we do things. We’re not going to win every game, but we’re going to try to win. …
“We came into a situation and we’re trying to make it better.”