Steve Wilks Did More Than Enough to be 'The Guy' in Carolina
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The NFL does not have a good track record when it comes to hiring minorities to head coaching positions. It's been a problem in the league for a long time and really, since its existence.
There is a large number of minority coaches that are more than deserving of an opportunity, including former Panthers interim head coach Steve Wilks.
For the second time in his career, an NFL franchise gave up on him after a brief head coaching stint. After just one year with a really bad roster, the Arizona Cardinals fired Wilks. The move made no sense considering the expectation was that they would be in a rebuild and that it would take a couple of years to truly get things going.
This year, Wilks slid into the head coaching role (sort of) and impressed many around the league by turning the Panthers around from a 1-4 team with no hope or sense of direction to competing for a division title in the final two weeks of the season.
Wilks interviewed for the head coaching job twice over the past week or so but the organization went in a different direction, hiring Frank Reich on Thursday.
Don't get me wrong, Reich is a really strong hire and one that I see working out for the Panthers. I don't want to discredit him whatsoever. But at some point, when does Steve Wilks get a real shot?
No, 6-6 isn't "incredible" when you look at it on paper, but when you throw in all of the obstacles that he and this team had to overcome it's hard to fathom playing .500 football over the final 12 games of the season.
Shortly after taking over the team in October, the Panthers traded away WR Robbie Anderson and more importantly, RB Christian McCaffrey. At the same time, then-starting quarterback Baker Mayfield was on the shelf with an ankle injury, forcing P.J. Walker to start a handful of games in his place. Had it not been for injuries to Sam Darnold and rookie Matt Corral, Walker wouldn't have even made the 53-roster out of training camp.
Carolina also went through three defensive line coaches during the season and lost other members of the coaching staff who followed Matt Rhule to Nebraska.
Steve Wilks had every excuse to not be successful. They could have very easily finished in the bottom two or three in the league but throwing in the towel was never an option for Wilks. The team embraced his mentality and rallied around him playing as if they had something to prove.
I understand wanting to hire an offensive-minded coach because of how poor that side of the ball has been in recent years. But let's not forget that the Panthers set franchise records for total yards (570), rushing yards (321), and rushing yards in a single half (240) in a 37-23 win over Detroit. Let's not forget that Sam Darnold had the best six-game stretch of his career under Wilks' watch. Let's not forget that D'Onta Foreman went from a rarely used back to one of the more successful backs in the league this season. And let's not forget that Terrace Marshall Jr. finally began to become a factor at wide receiver.
What is hard to really understand is how you can go against the locker room and what the players want. And how you can go against the guy that breathed life back into the Panthers' fan base and Bank of America Stadium. Wilks instilled the culture needed to win in Carolina on the fly and darn near won a division title. Just imagine what he could have done with an offseason to handpick his coaching staff and his roster, and mold the team to the way he wants it.
This wasn't just any ordinary job for Steve. This meant more to him being from Charlotte and having been in the organization once before.
I'll leave you with my question for those who are completely against Wilks being a head coach. And that is, what did you expect him to do with this team?
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