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by WILL FOLKS
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Hope sprung eternal in Charlotte, North Carolina ahead of the Carolina Panthers‘ 2025 season opener – marking the start of a year in which the struggling franchise was (is?) projected to take a major leap forward under second-year head coach Dave Canales and 2023 No. 1 overall draft pick, quarterback Bryce Young.
In his third season as a starter (not counting his abbreviated benching last year), Young was (is?) expected to build on the flashes of excellence he sporadically showed after reclaiming his starting job from journeyman veteran Andy Dalton.
Young didn’t play his way back into the starting job, mind you. Dalton sustained an off-field injury that left the team with no choice but to reinsert their “franchise” signal caller.
So… how’s year three of the Bryce Young experiment coming along?
In their season opener on Sunday (September 7, 2025) against the Jacksonville Jaguars, both Young and the Panthers regressed. The 24-year-old Pennsylvania native completed just 18 of 35 passes (51.4%) with one touchdown and two interceptions. A third interception – a pick-six – was called back due to a defensive holding penalty. Young committed another yet turnover in the waning moments of the first half – fumbling on a scramble up the middle as the Panthers had moved into field goal range.
Jacksonville scored ten points off of Young’s miscues – and the frustration that’s been so prevalent during the Panthers’ David Tepper era boiled over on the sidelines. Following a questionable play call on a fourth-and-one from the Jacksonville five-yard line, Canales sought to console Young as he returned to the sidelines.
Young has having none of it…
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Bryce Young seems mad at Canales for his "optimist bully" attitude but if that's the case, then external factors are motivators, he just lied to us. pic.twitter.com/Flm4HEDt2d
— Roll Coverage Pod (@RollCoveragePod) September 9, 2025
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It’s obviously way too early to say whether the Panthers week one regression worsens… or if the boundless preseason optimism so prevalent in the Queen City manifests itself in a more competitive product on the field. Certainly, Carolina isn’t running an imposing gauntlet to start the new season. Including the Jaguars, each of the Panthers’ first seven 2025 opponents failed to make the playoffs in 2024 – and five of those teams lost their season-opener this year.
The real question, though, isn’t whether the Panthers sink or swim at this critical juncture in the franchise’s history. Instead, the real question is who is making the decisions which will determine the answer.
For the past seven years, that’s been Tepper – the mercurial, micromanaging owner who purchased the team in May of 2018 and has presided over its headlong descent into dysfunction. The Panthers have posted a 36-81 (.307) record under the billionaire hedge fund manager – easily the worst mark in the league over that span. They have not had a single winning season nor a single playoff appearance under Tepper, who is now on his fourth full-time head coach.
In the five years before Tepper bought the team, the Panthers went 54-31-1 (.621) – reaching the playoffs four times and making it to Super Bowl 50. All under the same coach.
As the Panthers’ collapse approached terminal velocity, a new narrative began to emerge out of the team’s headquarters – one in which the meddling owner was purportedly taking a step back and trusting his “football people.” Last December, reporter Joe Person of The Athletic penned one of the first columns about Tepper’s supposed “hands-off” approach.
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RELATED | PANTHERS’ STRUGGLE CONTINUES
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“We’ve heard nary a peep from the Panthers’ owner this season,” Person wrote. “Tepper is still a part of the big decisions and stops by practice regularly. But he seems to have a level of trust with the latest group of ‘football people’ that might not have been as strong with previous regimes.”
Panthers’ reporter Dean Jones of Cat Crave concurred, noting Tepper was “trusting the process at long last.”
“He’s not front and center anymore,” Jones wrote. “Tepper is focusing his attention on improving facilities behind the scenes and helping within the community. This represents a drastic change of pace — one that most fans have been clamoring for almost from the moment he got into the building.”
“The Panthers have a long, hard road ahead,” he added. “But as long as Tepper stays in the proverbial shadows and maintains this positive outlook, they might just have a chance.”
Jones cited Tepper’s relationships with Canales, new general manager Dan Morgan and new executive vice president of football operations Brandt Tilis as being instrumental in the development of this purported “trust.”
“The relationships formed with Canales, Morgan, and Tilis have helped greatly,” he wrote. “Taking a back seat, lending some input when asked, and having confidence in his employees are only going to help after years of perennial failure.”
More recently, Jones dispelled rumors that Canales might be fired if the Panthers didn’t show marked improvement in his second season – insisting the irascible owner had learned his lesson and was willing to give the new leadership time.
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“Not to admonish Tepper of any guilt regarding the Panthers’ freefall to rock bottom in recent years, but failing to acknowledge he may have seen the error of his ways is a tired, lazy approach at this juncture,” Jones wrote. “Tepper is bullish about the current project. He’s giving it time and staying away from his previous desires to meddle in every single decision regarding the football operation.”
The only problem with this “hands-off” narrative? Those on the inside insist it is nothing but a well-constructed fiction.
“In reality, Tepper is just as involved as before, if not more so,” a source familiar with the inner workings of the franchise told FITSNews. “He’s just using Tilis as his mouthpiece to hide his involvement. (Tepper is) the shadow GM.”
According to our source, Tepper’s fingerprints were all over the controversial decision to trade veteran wideout Adam Thielen – the team’s leading wide receiver in 2024 – to the Minnesota Vikings less than two weeks before the start of the season. Carolina sent Thielen to his former team along with a conditional 2026 seventh round pick and a fifth round selection in 2027. In exchange, the Panthers got a fifth round pick in 2026 and a fourth round selection in 2027.
“The guy was our leading receiver last year,” our source said. “He was perfect as a comfort zone for Bryce. So if you want Bryce to do well this season – which is absolutely his make or break season – why would you trade him away for day three picks in the 2026 draft?”
That’s a great question… but more importantly, what sort of message does a trade like that send to the team?
“That’s the type of thing a team does before the trade deadline when they are out of contention,” our source continued. “Not a week before the season opener! It signals we are in sell mode before the first game. Just crazy.”
The root of the insanity? Tepper…
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“He has his hands in everything,” our source maintained. “Definitely Thielen. Trades, drafts (and) who we bring in. Who we hire and fire.”
Tepper has also reportedly been integral in Carolina’s “management of Bryce.” Or, more accurately, its mismanagement of the former Heisman Trophy winner and top pick of the 2023 draft.
“Bryce is pissed at the play calling,” our source said, referring to Sunday’s sideline confrontation with Canales. “It was just like the beginning of last season. If you go back and see the last few games of last season where Bryce was playing well, they let him rip it, take chances, call plays where he has to put the ball in a tight window. And he did it well.”
This season?
“It’s like they put the training wheels back on.”
“Either he’s a decent NFL quarterback – or he’s not,” our source continued. “He should be in full command of the offense and let(ting) it rip. Then we will know for sure. You can’t baby it.”
Speaking of babying, Carolina’s training camp – which ran from July 21 through August 14 – was reportedly not as intense as it should have been, leaving the team lagging heading into its opener.
“Our training camp (was) way too soft,” our source stated. “Like a country club. So we get to the start of the season and we are just not ready to play. Our practices last week were way harder than training camp practices. That just doesn’t make sense.”
Is that Canales’ fault? Not necessarily…
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“Last year they were letting a ‘sports scientist’ dictate how long practice would be, and how many reps each player was allowed to take in practice,” our source continued. “Can you imagine someone telling Nick Saban how to run a practice? It’s nuts. The head coach has very little say over some of these things. Even our general manager – who is a great guy – is overruled by ‘Tepper’s guy.'”
Adding intrigue to the “shadow GM” theory is the fact Tilis interviewed for the Panthers’ general manager job at the same time Morgan did. Hiring both executives was “a little strange,” our source noted – unless of course the goal all along was to create a system to perpetuate Tepper’s micromanagement. Or micro-mismanagement.
At literally every step, Tepper has misstepped. Most egregiously, our source pointed to his controversial decision in January 2023 to hire former Indianapolis Colts’ head coach Frank Reich over interim head coach Steve Wilks – who posted a 6-6 record with the Panthers after Tepper fired former head coach Matt Rhule on October 10, 2022. Rather than give Wilkes a shot at the job, Tepper was convinced the franchise needed an offensive-minded coach like Ben Johnson, who was the Detroit Lions’ offensive coordinator at the time.
Never mind that the three most successful coaches in franchise history – John Fox, Ron Rivera and Dom Capers – were all defensive coaches.
“When we made Steve Wilks the interim head coach for 12 games in 2022 it was the closest I have seen us to having a real identity,” our source said. “And I saw it with my own eyes: the players responded to him and played harder than I had ever seen them play. There was a definite feeling in the building that he was exactly who we needed to be the head coach of the Panthers. But Tepper was enamored with Ben Johnson. And when Johnson turned us down he just kept looking for offensive minded coaches. He didn’t care that the head coach is responsible for the whole team.”
FITSNews has tracked the Panthers’ implosion closely ever since Tepper’s botched crony capitalist deal with the Palmetto State. Count on us to continue to do so as the 2025 season unfolds for better or (likely) worse.
Speaking of, the Panthers are set to travel to State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona this coming Sunday (September 14, 2025) for a tilt with the Arizona Cardinals. Oddsmakers have installed Carolina as 4.5-point underdogs, with kickoff set for 4:05 p.m. EDT on CBS. Oh, and Young is still listed as the team’s starting quarterback… for now.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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1 comment
It’s obvious no one is minding the store.