As most of the Carolina Panthers’ world completes their final week of vacation before returning to real life and training camp in Spartanburg next week, the team has made multiple moves to shore up their coaching staff as well as the football and scouting sides of their operation, according to the team website. The most noticeable move on the list was to promote Richard Rodgers to secondary coach with Jeff Imamura graduating to assistant secondary/cornerbacks coach – after Curtis Fuller resigned in May, the two have been leading the young secondary through spring workouts; Rodgers came to the team in 2012 as special teams assistant before moving up to special teams coordinator for the final seven games of the season. He held that position until 2014 when he moved to the secondary, but he’s been a part of the Rivera coaching tree for much longer than that: Rodgers was teammates with Head Coach Ron Rivera at Cal.
Another interesting move was the hiring of Rivera’s nephew Vincent ‘Bug’ Rivera as defensive quality control coach – at only 25 years old, the Cal grad is one of the youngest on the coaching staff. If you’re curious about the role of the quality control coach, it’s a part of the coaching staff that spends much of their time breaking down film for the head coach, sometimes many weeks in advance as they analyze data about the tendencies of the opposing coaches. The QC coaches often run the scout team or practice squad during game weeks – because they are so familiar with the opposition, they help to make sure the scout teams show the first string exactly what they’ll be seeing on Sunday – when Luke Kuechly calls out the plays that Drew Brees is trying to run, it’s because of the quality control coach.
The team also made some moves in their scouting department, with Jeff Morrow being named senior director of college scouting, a position held by longtime Panthers employee Don Gregory from 2006 to 2017 before he was moved to senior executive scout last offseason and subsequently let go last month. Morrow has 23 years of NFL experience and has been with the Panthers for over two decades; in a flurry of other moves, Eric Stokes and Mike Szabo were named regional directors of college scouting while Mike Martin, who recently spent time with the Texans, becomes the southwest area scout.
Pro Scout Rob Hanrahan, who spent 16 seasons with the Buffalo Bills before joining the Panthers last season, will serve as assistant director of pro personnel – the Carolina-Buffalo connection that has seen former defensive coordinator Sean McDermott and assistant GM Brandon Beane head to snowier pastures continue to trade talent up and down the eastern seaboard.
And in a move that will certainly bring up memories of his thousand-yard season as the Panthers entered the NFL in 1995, former wide receiver and expansion draft pick Mark Carrier has been named senior advisor to the general manager after serving as the team’s director of player engagement since 2011 – Carrier still has the fifth-most receiving yards in franchise history and spent 12 years in the NFL as a wide receiver, retiring in 1998 as the team’s all-time leading receiver.
