David Tepper Discusses the Hire of Frank Reich
Why Frank Reich stood out
"First, I just want to thank Coach [Steve] Wilks for his time here and the job he did. I don't want to talk about the process as much as I want to talk about Frank's process. Frank talked about commitment to excellence. And that commitment to excellence begins with the coaches we get in the building and the process we have for getting coaches in the building in the future."
"This is a funny thing this NFL and obviously the head coach has to have the last word on the coaches he picks. But this is a funny business. You'll do a process if you hire a half a million dollar person or million dollar person, you look at five, six, seven other people. So there has to be a good vetting process. It can't be an old boys network and that sort of thing that's been going on in business and the NFL. There has to be a process. You look for the best person. That best person, that's why the head coach has to have the final say. It means they have to fit in a lot of different ways. You have to go back and forth and make sure the person you have in that position is going to be one of the best coaches we can have in all of these different things. Coordinator, coaches, etc. Frank is committed to the process."
If the goal was to always hire an offensive-minded coach this time around
"It's great to have a CEO coach. It's preferable to have a coach that is really extraordinary on one side of the ball or the other side of the ball. It makes you have to fill those key coordinator positions when you have that."
"I think it's a mistake to have a CEO-type head coach. That's a mistake. Just in general. I think we want to get someone who's really good on offense or really good on defense. And we think that Frank is really good on offense."
On how close Wilks was to getting the job
"The process we went through had to do with how we have the coaches in here and looking at the future. That was the process we went through. Everybody presented who they had and what they were thinking to help us win in the future and we really made that decision based on that."
The Panthers being at the center of double standard hiring practices
"I think first, you should look at our executive team and inside the building. Look at who we have at different positions inside our building. President is a woman. We probably have the most diverse executive team in the NFL. We have two African Americans. We are probably a minority of white men on our executive team right now. That's where it starts. That's the process. And that's the process we're talking about here. You don't want an old boys network. The old boys network works all kinds of different ways. Unfortunately, in this case, it's a detriment because most of the old boys were white. That should be your main focus. How do you break that old boys network? How do you break that process? You break the process by trying to get the best people possible in every role you can get. Whether it's the new GC we hired which happens to be an African American woman or if it happens to be Frank Reich, who is a caucasian male. I don't care who it is. Whether we go through offensive coordinator..defensive coordinator... who is the best person? Not whether if you had a former relationship with them. But who is that best person? Like I said, if you have a $500k person come into our office, eight people see that person. When we're vetting head coaches, Scott [Fitterer] should have an input - a very big input and Dan [Morgan] should have a very big input in that process. And we should be going through all the people who could be the best in that position. Now, they have to have a fit in there. But you want to break the old boys network. That's what the key is."
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