The Carolina Panthers have agreed to hire Frank Reich as their new head coach, the team announced Thursday.
— Frank Reich, the starting quarterback for the first game in Carolina Panthers history in 1995, is now the team’s sixth head coach.
Owner David Tepper chose Reich, 61, after an extensive search that included nine candidates, including interim head coach Steve Wilks and former New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton.
It ultimately came down to Reich and Wilks, who went 6-6 after Matt Rhule was fired following a 1-4 start. Wilks was the sentimental favorite of Carolina players to get the full-time job.
The last head coach to switch head-coaching jobs without a year off from being a head coach was Ron Rivera, who took the Washington job in 2020 after he was fired by the Panthers midway through the 2019 season. Head coaches to switch teams without year off since 2015:
Reich, fired as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts in November, is the first offensive-minded head coach hired in Carolina history.
That played a big role in the decision to hire him over Wilks, whose background is on defense.
Seven of the nine candidates had offensive backgrounds in a search that centered around fixing the quarterback position and an offense that has been in flux since quarterback Cam Newton began having shoulder issues midway through the 2018 season.
Since then, Carolina has had eight different quarterbacks start at least one game and has finished no better than 19th in the NFL in scoring. That has played a major role in the Panthers having five straight losing seasons since Tepper bought the franchise in 2018 for, at the time, a league-record $2.275 billion.
“Winning is the most important thing both on the field and in the community, and I am committed to winning a Super Bowl championship together,” Tepper said at the time.
