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Matt Rhule opens up on what went wrong while he coached the Carolina Panthers

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By Ian Kayanja | Last updated Jul 4, 2024 10:32 PM ET

Matt Rhule's run with the Carolina Panthers wasn't a long one.

He coached the Panthers from 2020 through 2022 and lost each season while at the helm.

Rhule recently opened up about his NFL failure during a sitdown interview with college football analyst Joel Klatt.

“I would not be able to be the h ead coach at Nebraska had I not gone through that. Every decision you make is magnified at Nebraska ten times over and if you’re not really confident in who you are, I could see it really affecting you.

“I’ve had 50,000, 70,000 people in the Panthers’ stadium screaming to fire me. What I learned through all of that is, I just want to make it all about my players. It’s not about me. I came back to college football because I knew young people needed coaches that cared about them, coaches that don’t want to throw them away, coaches that don’t want to give up on them.

“If I learned anything during my time there (at Carolina), it was Christian McCaffrey, Brian Burns, all these amazing players I had a chance to coach…they’re just people. You see them as superstars, but they’re just people. I lost a little bit of that during COVID. One of the worst things I did early on there I didn’t connect enough. In my last year, I did an amazing job, I think, of connecting with those players. And they battled for me to the very end. I came back to college now and it’s all about human connection.”

Rhule's tenure with the Panthers sat at 11-27. He never got close to the playoffs and the Panthers cycled through several quarterbacks during his run.

Rhule was replaced by a slew of head coaches. Carolina hopes Dave Canales sticks around longer than the previous names in his same role.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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