Players Comment on the Noise Surrounding Matt Rhule's Job Security

Matt Rhule's future in Carolina looks bleak following a 37-15 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, dropping the team to 1-4 on the season and 11-27 since he took over as head coach.

With all the changes that were made to the roster and coaching staff this offseason, the Panthers were expected to take a step and be a team that would be in the hunt for the playoffs. Although there are still a lot of seasons left, the product on the field doesn't give fans any hope that they'll be able to find some answers and dig themselves out of this hole.

As bad as things have been, the players are not turning on their head coach. In fact, it's the exact opposite. They're going to bat for him and several of them are irritated with all of the outsiders directly blaming the losses on Rhule.

QB Baker Mayfield

"We're fine in that locker room when it comes to that. There's a lot of plays that we just have to flat-out make. He can't do that. He can't go make plays for us. He can't do the execution for us. There's one on ones, we have good players. We just have to make plays."

RB Christian McCaffrey

"Yeah, there's a lot of criticisms with Coach Rhule that bother me and of our coaching staff in general that bother me. I believe players win games and if players win games, players lose games. We gotta make plays. We gotta execute."

"You can say what you want about him but I've been around a lot of coaches and he's somebody that's always had my back. You work hard, you do the right thing, he'll have your back...and that means something for what it's worth. I'm pissed that we can't get it done for him and for the rest of our staff. We need to play better as players."

What his message would be if David Tepper asked about his confidence in Matt Rhule: "I would say I have full confidence in Matt. Like I said, players win games. I've always believed that the head coach and the quarterback get way too much credit and way too much blame."

QB P.J. Walker

"The atmosphere. The environment. From my experience, being at Temple we was 2-10 that first year. 6-6, .500 that next year. That's really the difference. And then that third year, things really started to take off, but it started off slow that third year as well. So for us, it's just find a way. Find a way. I think that's the hardest part. It's tough to win in this league but you've got to figure it out."

DE Brian Burns

"A lot because they don't know what is being said in the building. They don't know everything that goes on in our day-to-day practices, so for them to speak on it is really, really ignorant. At the end of the day, we tune most of that out because it's opinionated. At the end of the day, who's playing? It's the players, right?

CB Donte Jackson

"We know what kind of ball is being coached. It's not losing ball. We got to be better as players."

OL Pat Elflein

"Yeah, we got to play better. We definitely didn't play good enough today. We got to play better."

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