Frank Reich to Call Offensive Plays in 2023

As expected, the veteran head coach will lead the offense for Carolina this fall.

Carolina's offense will look quite different in 2023. Several new faces at key spots including on the sidelines in head coach Frank Reich and first-time offensive coordinator Thomas Brown.

When Reich was hired, he said he would likely call the plays to start the season but that he would pass that responsibility off to Brown when the time was right.

"I went into the process of thinking about calling plays, not calling plays. There is going to be some point that I'm going to pass it off," said Reich. "I know that's going to be hard. I've been laughing with Thomas [Brown] about that already. I said, 'I'm going to pass it off at some point. I don't know when,' but I do think there will be a time and a place. And I think it'll become apparent when that is. But I think the right thing for me to do for our team and for our offense right now is for me to continue to use my experience there. But I'll lean heavy on Thomas. I can already tell. I've already leaned on him hard on a couple of things and I felt wisdom, conviction, strength. So, that relationship is going to be really good."

On Tuesday, Brown told reporters that the plan is for Reich to call all of the offensive plays this fall but he will be down on the sideline with him instead of up in the box. Considering the team just drafted a rookie quarterback, it makes sense for Reich to call the shots. He has experience working with quarterbacks and having a first-time play-caller and a rookie QB isn't necessarily a recipe for success.

Reich and Brown spent the first couple of months together working on putting together a playbook. It's a never-ending project that will constantly see changes and tweaks as they learn the strengths and weaknesses of the roster and continue to grow with a rookie quarterback. 

Right now, it's about setting the foundation. Giving them something to build off of and while doing so, trying their best to bring their philosophies together. Brown comes from a Sean McVay-ran offense where they run a lot of tight sets and use a ton of pre-snap motion, which I look to call eye candy. 

On the other hand, Reich has been known to run his offense primarily out of the gun, spreading the field out and using some empty sets to create a clearer picture for the quarterback. But make no mistake about it, Reich places an emphasis on running the football and knows that with the offensive line and tight end group he has in Carolina, there will be some run-heavy Sundays.

"It's been going great so far," Brown said when asked about the progress of building the offense. "As I mentioned during my opening press conference, we tried to sit down and kind of look at both systems and strip them all the way down to the bare roots and try to figure out how to build them back up to make them better but also how to put them together to find this perfect blend, this perfect marriage. In an ideal world, it'll probably be about 50/50. But I think it depends on situation. 

"I would say normal D&D (down and distance), it's probably 60/40 (Reich's philosophy/tendencies). But I think it varies depending on personnel grouping as well. You talk about 11 personnel versus 12 or 13 because if you watched in L.A., we were probably 97% 11 personnel, so there wasn't a lot of 12 or 13 inventory. But like I said before, try to keep it as much as we can an even split of 50/50, try to find the best of both worlds."

Frank Reich is a smart guy. He's not going to be stubborn and run the offense "his way" and "his way" only. There will be some wrinkles to it and some Sean McVay/Thomas Brown influences featured. After all, this is going to be Brown's offense one day. 

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