The Carolina Panthers on Thursday announced Frank Reich as their new head coach, which means Steve Wilks will not be the club's full-time head coach.
NFL insiders indicated Wilks will hit the open market after missing out on the job, and he confirmed as much in a statement released Friday.
A few thoughts.
1. That's an extremely gracious statement under any circumstances, but especially these. Wilks wasn't a typical coordinator-turned-interim head coach. He's a Charlotte native, a West Charlotte High School graduate, and a former player for the Arena League's Charlotte Rage who got his start in coaching at Charlotte's Johnson C. Smith University. He previously coached for the Panthers from 2012-17 before returning in 2022. There aren't a lot of coaches who consider "Carolina Panthers head coach" their dream job, but Wilks was probably one of them.
Missing out on this job had to hurt, professionally and personally.
2. Wilks has been in coaching since 1995 and at the NFL level for a decade and a half. He went 3-13 in his one season as the Arizona Cardinals head coach in 2018, then was replaced by a coach who'd just been fired as a college head coach, and was set to become a college offensive coordinator until the Cardinals made him their head coach.
As the Panthers' interim, he took a 1-4 team to within one win of the playoffs (in an admittedly weak NFC South). The Colts fired Reich for going 3-5-1 in the same season in which Wilks went 6-6. Wilks was already in place in Carolina, leading a team of assistant coaches he didn't hire and players he didn't draft or sign.
And yet the Panthers chose Reich over him.
3. Nothing in Points 1 or 2 guarantee Wilks the job. He is not owed the Carolina Panthers head coaching position, no more than any coach is owed any job. While it's true Wilks had a better 2022 record than Reich, Reich was 37-28 in his first four season in Indy, with three winning seasons and two playoff appearances in four seasons. It's objectively true that Reich has more skins on the wall as an NFL head coach than Wilks, and the Panthers can credibly argue his skill set is more aptly fits the team's needs for 2023.
4. Many, many people have argued NFL ownership has used the opaque hiring process as cover to continually elevate one type of coach at the expense of another. Wilks's experiences in Arizona and Carolina will now join that argument.
Regardless of Points 2, 3, and 4, that's an incredibly gracious statement by Wilks.
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