It’s easy to compliment people after they’ve gone.
You’ve likely heard an awful lot about how good of a man Ron Rivera is, how much everyone liked him and loved to play for him, how this was an unfortunate but necessary change that has been made in the Carolina Panthers organization. Of course, all of this is true, but just because it’s true doesn’t mean that it is the only thing that’s true. Let’s attempt to set aside Ron Rivera the person and instead assess Ron Rivera the Head Coach.
Ultimately, whether the right decision or not, Rivera is gone – whoever is in his place come the start of next season will face many of the same challenges that Rivera has for the best part of the decade. With that in mind, it seems more than prudent to be really critical about where it was that Rivera went wrong, while also appreciating where he was good, in order to provide a template for the next head coach as to how to make a success of their tenure in Carolina.
Leadership Still Matters, And It Starts Up Front
Before getting into why Rivera fell short in Carolina, it is also important to understand why he was able to last as long as he did despite having a losing record in six of his nine seasons in Carolina – the answer to that is largely due to three really remarkable turnarounds. In 2013, 2014 and 2017, the Panthers seemed out of contention at one point or another in the season; in 2014, they looked out of contention with three games to go – when they turned it around, there was a certain degree of things falling the right way, but there is also a strong argument that Ron Rivera had a real ability to motivate and lead players, not just in the good times but also in the bad. While this ultimately wasn’t enough to keep his job, it should not be forgotten how important leadership is for a head coach; there are many bright schematic minds who simply don’t have the ability to be that. As good as their schemes might be on paper, they often end up being quite poor head coaches.
In terms of what a prospective coach looking to learn from Rivera could get about leadership is that ultimately you have to be willing to stand up and hold yourself and others accountable. Rivera talked a reasonable amount in his departing press conference about how injuries robbed this team of their best chance to be successful – and there is certainly some truth to that – but Rivera rarely stood at that same podium and blamed factors beyond his control. He might have misjudged the size of the issues with his team at times, and he was more than willing to go out of his way to not answer certain questions, but he never tried to pass the blame onto somebody else.
There is, of course, a fine line between accountability and blame – but what Rivera also did so well was that the accountability was always kept in-house, and while that likely didn’t make things easy for those trying to get answers as to why things had gone wrong from outside, it meant that there was never a sense of airing private issues in public. This might seem like a low bar to hold a coach to, but it is far from something that is universal among coaches; there are a lot of people who take for granted the things that Rivera did really well when talking about him as a coach. He clearly has a passion for helping and developing players as people and trying to set an example of how to behave in society – there are lot of coaches the Panthers could go with that would not provide that quality and that shouldn’t be ignored.
The other thing that having a good atmosphere around your team does for you is that it makes it a lot easier to sell your team to prospective free agents. There have been numerous examples of players citing the atmosphere around the locker room as a reason for signing for Carolina under Rivera – understanding that that can be incredibly important for players is important for coaches, GMs and owners alike. People talk a lot about culture in the NFL, but what often what doesn’t get talked about is what it takes to build that culture, and Ron Rivera was understandably proud speaking at his final press conference in Carolina about how he has been able to turn the culture around in Carolina.
The next coach would do well to try and build upon that, and Rivera has provided a blueprint about how to do that by genuinely caring about the people you coach, not just about how they perform on Sunday.
Up Next: And Now, The Bad
