Matt Rhule Still Believes Teddy Bridgewater is the Right Guy
It's been a rough year for the Carolina Panthers, to say the least. The team recently dropped to 4-9 after their 32-27 loss to the Denver Broncos this Sunday.
When Matt Rhule was hired as the head coach of the Panthers, there were a lot of rumors floating around that he and the team may actually end up keeping Cam Newton. Well, you all know how that worked out and the Panthers decided to sign free agent Teddy Bridgewater to a three-year, $63 million deal. The thinking of the front office wasn't that Bridgewater would be a "bridge" to the next guy, but to be "the guy" of the future.
Right from the rip, Panthers' fans started critiquing Bridgewater, not believing that he was the right guy and didn't even give him a chance. Now that we are 13 games into the season, I would say that there is some merit behind people's criticism. Although Bridgewater has been efficient in completing 70% of his passes, how many times have the Panthers had the ball in their hands at the end of games and did not come out with a win? Now, every situation is different because there were some of those game-ending drives that the offensive line gave him no chance to throw and there were times where receivers just flat out dropped passes. But there were also times where Teddy held onto the ball too long and either took an unnecessary sack or threw an interception.
Following the Panthers' loss on Sunday, head coach Matt Rhule was asked if he still believes that he can build a winning team in Charlotte with Bridgewater at the helm.
"Absolutely. But I don’t think he is going to be successful in two‐minutes if he gets sacked on the first play. I don’t think he is going to be successful if we have drops. I think that all of us have to continue to work together to improve. I think we were down by 15 and he brought us back and they scored again. So really, at the end of the day, he scored a bunch of points in the fourth quarter. I thought he was fantastic throughout the entire fourth quarter. Again, that penalty and then the first play sack just has to be better by everybody. I’m not going to pin it on him. I’m sure he would be the first to say, ‘I have to do this, I have to do that.’ But there are a lot of things that have to be improved. We are a team that, for us to win, we have to do everything right and we have to play really well. We just played okay, and we didn’t do everything right. We had a chance to win but we didn’t come away with the win like I feel like we should have."
This is where I agree with Rhule. There are too many other areas of this team that need to be improved to just pin everything on the quarterback. The offensive line is atrocious, the defense at times has been abysmal, and they've been without Christian McCaffrey nearly all season long.
I'm not saying Bridgewater is the clear guy for the future ornot, but you have to surround your quarterback with a better offensive line and even better defense in order to win games. People want to call Teddy Bridgewater a "game manager" because of his high percentage passes but that's the way offenses are run in the league now. Every team is going to the quick passing game with the occasional deep ball. Even if you really believe Bridgewater is a "game manager," just look at the Washington Football Team and Alex Smith. It's amazing how a team looks when you have an incredible defense. Washington has rattled off four straight wins and has taken over first place in the NFC East. I'm not saying the Panthers have to have a top-five defense for Bridgewater to be successful, but they certainly need to be better than what they've shown.
The jury is still out on whether or not Bridgewater can be the guy. If the team improves on the offensive line and produces a better defense and losses continue to pile up in 2021, then yeah, it might be time to look around for a new quarterback. Until then, let's see what happens.
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