Another fresh coaching candidate. My premise in part is, since they've had two hiring cycles in four years, and an OC change in another, that there are a lot of guys out there you have told 'no'. Find some new ones. Enter Bobby Slowik. Houston Texans OC. Came with Demeco Ryans from the 49ers, to which we'll discuss in a second. Being Texans' OC is a complex situation if you're hiring for the Carolina Panthers. The Texans and Panthers had the bit of cat-and-mouse on Bryce Young and CJ Stroud; Stroud's success has catapulted Slowik. I feel like he will be a candidate for exactly that reason, I feel like Carolina will want to poke around the situation and use it to reflect on what they did wrong. I would prefer they reflect on their own time, lest they miss out on a possibly good hire. Starting back from the beginning: son of a coach, Bob Slowik, who was Dave Wannstedt's Chicago DC, 1999 Browns (expansion) DC, did time with the Packers as DC, late-Shanahan Broncos, which led him into the Washington Shanahan 2010 era. That led the younger Bobby into a defensive assistant job with Washington, 2011-13; at that point, the elder was DBs coach, LBs coach. All of this under Jim Haslett as DC. That staff included OC Kyle Shanahan and TEs coach Sean McVay, QBs coach Matt LaFleur, and offensive assistant, Mike McDaniel. You might know those guys as four of the better head coaches in the league right now, two of them 9-3, two of them 6-6. The pair didn't stay into 2014, under Jay Gruden (others did); the elder went on to the CFL, Bobby worked for PFF for two years. That last bit is going to be controversially interesting, the possibility that Bobby Slowik is the first NFL coordinator or head coach to have spent time just doing analytics. When he was there, he also worked with current Rams QBs coach Zac Robinson. 2017 came and Kyle Shanahan got the 9ers job, again on defense as a quality control coach. He moved to the O side in 2019, then up to Offensive Passing Game Specialist once Mike McDaniel went to full-time OC (Mike LaFleur left, they were passing and running game specialists, respectively), somewhat putting Slowik in LaFleur's space; by 2022, that became "passing game coordinator". Now, the 49ers' relative success and schematic prowess speak for themselves. And all of that was Kyle Shanahan calling plays. But that didn't hurt McDaniel from being ready for the next step, and certainly Slowik as a play-caller has been ready this year. He gets high marks for his ability to stay flexible, for instance. And it's not like Demeco Ryans is hovering over the offense to that high an extent.
Now, he's young. 36. If you're swinging for the fences, absolutely. If you're expecting him to helm with a sage hand, not sure of that. And you might have to give him time. Staff fits: interestingly, Thomas Brown is an interesting holdover choice; There's an outside chance Robinson, now the QBs coach and passing game coordinator in LA, as the OC. There's scheme commonality with Brown, there's a very strong tie with Robinson (though Robinson may prefer to be able to call plays, and with Slowik being a young play-caller himself, he may prefer to keep going with that). Slowik could, with the new rules, pull from positional coaches of the 9ers or Dolphins (Wes Welker, Dolphins' WRs coach; maybe Jon Embree, Asst HC/TEs; if the 9ers, who don't list an OC, would have to choose between QBs coach Brian Griese or Slowik's own replacement, Klint Kubiak, I bet they could get Kubiak, who has experience as an OC). Taylor Embree, current Jets RB coach, could be had. Best guess is, you can land your guy as an OC, but you don't have the ability to just pull whatever, you can't just raid other teams' position coaches to be your position coaches. You would want to backload with some experience that's also aligned with philosophy (since we have to say that part now). You probably couldn't get a ton of Texans (Cory Undlin or Chris Kiffin as a DC maybe, and if lucky, you can pull in a senior assistant from there like Bill Lazor but not the likely next OC, Ben McDaniels or QBs coach Jerrod Johnson). You'd want an experienced QBs coach and... only the one. Though that could also be current Texans senior assistant Shane Day (who was 49ers QBs coach, 2019-2020). You'd certainly prefer to have a vet DC to counter balance the young HC; if keeping Ejiro Evero is a possibility, great, but back end getting a former head coach is at least as good. If Robert Saleh doesn't survive, no one's turning him down; if David Tepper is still throwing money, and the new head coach is on board, things like that remain possible. All that blather to say, Slowik for his age compared to Mike MacDonald of similar vintage, has more diverse connections. But in the end, you have to be good with the head coach first, and then work from there. Slowik's not a guy I've heard speak a ton, he speaks well but he is certainly not a Bill Cowher yeller; granted, most aren't and most shouldn't be. The personality for a turnaround is there. As teams pivot from wanting the next Sean McVay to wanting the next McDaniel, the interesting bit of that is... they're more similar than they aren't; if you had to pick between the McVay (open, spread, 11 personnel) or Shanahan wing of the WCO to have built the 2023 Panthers, you might have been better off choosing to be more Shanahan (unusually high fullback, TE rates compared to anyone but certainly McVay too). Whatever you do next, of course, is separated from 2023, 2022, and so on, but it's worth noting that 2023's OL would have fared better with a continuation of what worked in 2022. Is it a long shot? Could be! Is it interesting? Absolutely. Is it better than throwing yet another treatise toward a Ben Johnson who has already suggested he'd stay away? Yes.
Source: http://absolutepanthers.blogspot.com/fe ... ts/default
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