Tepper just fired Scott Fitterer as Carolina Panthers GM. There’s one simple reason why

Scott Fitterer, the Carolina Panthers general manager, got fired Monday morning.

The only real surprise was that it took so long.

Although head coaches and GMs are often given pink slips in tandem in the NFL, Fitterer hung on for six more weeks after head coach Frank Reich was fired on Nov. 27. Then owner Dave Tepper fired Fitterer early Monday on what is traditionally called “Black Monday” in the NFL because of all the departures, which means Tepper is now looking for both a new coach and GM.

“As we move forward with the new direction of our franchise, I have made the decision that Scott Fitterer will no longer serve as our general manager,” Tepper said in a statement Monday morning. “I appreciate Scott’s efforts and wish the best for him and his family.”

Fitterer’s downfall was ultimately expressed in one set of numbers: 14-37.

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That was Fitterer’s record as the Panthers GM in his three full seasons, since being hired in January 2021. It not only wasn’t good enough, it was the worst in the NFL in those three years.

Famously, Fitterer said early in his career with the Panthers that he and the team would be “in on every deal.” And he was. And he was a nice guy while doing that, too — it’s practically impossible to find someone who dislikes Fitterer.

5-12, 7-10 and 2-15

But the NFL is a results-oriented business, and Fitterer’s results — measured by the NFL’s gold standard of wins and losses — were terrible.

Reached by text message Monday, Fitterer declined comment about his firing.

Under Fitterer’s stewardship, the Panthers went 5-12, 7-10 and then, this year, 2-15. This final season is what did him in, as Carolina played bad, boring football with not only the worst offense in the NFL in 2023 but also one of the worst offenses the NFL has seen.

The Panthers suffered back-to-back shutout losses in their final two games — 26-0 to Jacksonville and 9-0 to Tampa Bay — and in doing so became the first team since the 2008 Cleveland Browns to get blanked in consecutive weeks. There’s bad and there’s historically bad, and this year’s Panthers managed to be both.

Time after time, a Fitterer deal sounded decent in theory, only to disintegrate in reality.

Trading Christian McCaffrey and DJ Moore robbed the 2023 offense of its two best weapons, and both of them posted career years away from the Panthers this past season. Giving running back Miles Sanders a $25 million contract less than a year ago — in an era where most NFL teams now consider running backs nearly interchangeable and not worth big contracts — became an obvious mistake.

And picking Bryce Young with the first overall pick in April 2023 over CJ Stroud — while certainly a team decision that also involved Reich and Tepper — could be a move that Carolina regrets for the next decade. While Young went 2-14 as a rookie starter (he missed one game), Stroud led Houston to a 10-7 record and into the playoffs.

Fitterer and the Panthers also miscalculated in that trade, as they never expected that the 2024 first-round pick they gave to Chicago in the Young deal to become the No. 1 overall pick. They thought this Panthers team at least had .500 talent, would go 7-10 at worst and wouldn’t be picking in the Top 10 in 2024.

Yet here we are.

‘A terrible side of this business’

Fitterer’s moves weren’t all off-kilter. Free agent wide receiver Adam Thielen was considered too old to be productive by some, but Fitterer signed him and he had a 1,000-yard season in 2023. Linebacker Frankie Luvu was signed cheaply and became one of the defense’s best players. Guard Austin Corbett, when healthy, has been a solid free-agent pickup.

There was some angst in the locker room Monday after Fitterer was fired, as players said goodbye to one another and cleaned out their stuff.

Said Corbett: “It’s just a terrible side of this business. Scott was incredible.... An awesome, awesome guy.... (But) this business is not meant for relationships.”

“I have so much appreciation for Scott, both the man and the person,” center Bradley Bozeman said. “He as a friend to me, and he always treated me with nothing but respect and kindness and honesty.”

It should be noted that Fitterer suffered his share of poor luck. Luck is part of the game, as Fitterer would certainly acknowledge.

But McCaffrey, who was hurt more than half the time in his final 2.5 seasons at Carolina, never seems to get hurt anymore in San Francisco. McCaffrey had 21 touchdowns by himself in 2023 to tie for the NFL lead; the Panthers offense, combined, only scored 20.

Carolina also had to put close to two dozen players on injured reserve this season, an extraordinarily high number. Fitterer may have been hamstrung a bit in the first half of his career as Panthers GM by previous coach Matt Rhule’s heavy influence on the 53-man roster. And the Panthers have had a few games that they managed to blow in the final minutes that, had they won, wouldn’t have made Fitterer’s 14-37 as a GM quite so strikingly poor.

Two very similar names

On a personal note, I will miss seeing Fitterer around, for he’s a pleasant person who’s easy to work with and was calm in basically all situations. Even when Tepper was throwing a drink beside him in Jacksonville in the direction of Jaguars fans, Fitterer stood three feet away, absolutely stoic.

Something I won’t miss: Getting texts from other reporters who have both myself and Fitterer’s name in their phone and who, by virtue of carelessness, text me questions they meant to ask Fitterer. Our first names are identical, after all, and our last names are only a syllable apart.

This led to me being asked repeatedly over the years whether I’m about to trade Burns or McCaffrey or who I was going to hire or fire.

Even Sunday night, after the Panthers’ season concluded, I got a frantic text from a well-known reporter who covers the team that read: “Appreciate all your help this season. Any word on your future? Thanks.”

Well, all of us are day-to-day in life, as we all know. But Scott Fitterer’s days in Panther-land ran out Monday, while mine covering the team will continue for the foreseeable future.

There’s no way that the next GM the Panthers hire will be a nicer guy than Fitterer.

But for the sake of everyone involved, I hope he wins a few more games.