From Justin Mason (@Masonjt24):
Justin, I think all things are on the table, and I don’t think anything has been decided yet.
Because David Tepper just went through it, there’s already a working list—he interviewed Kellen Moore, Sean Payton, Mike Kafka, Ken Dorsey, Ejiro Evero, Shane Steichen, Steve Wilks, and Jim Caldwell before hiring Frank Reich in January. Of those, obviously Payton and Steichen would be out, and I’d imagine Evero and Caldwell would be, too, since they’re on staff and weren’t promoted to interim coach, as would Dorsey, who was fired as the Bills’ offensive coordinator. It’s also hard to see Tepper going back to Wilks.
That leaves Moore and Kafka. And you can add Lions OC Ben Johnson, who the Panthers badly wanted to interview before Johnson decided to pull his name out of the search. Then, you could throw Jim Harbaugh—who reached out to the Panthers last year—into it, and Patriots linebackers coach Jerod Mayo, who turned down an interview, and come up with reasons for why any of them would work.
Truth is, a coaching search can be a little bit of a crapshoot. What’s not, though, is making sure things are right around whoever the coach is. So maybe creating that means Tepper wiping the slate clean, and picking a new coach and GM in tandem. Maybe it means letting the coaching search inform the decision he makes on incumbent Scott Fitterer and the personnel staff. Maybe it means finding a coach that will fit with Fitterer.
I don’t know which way that goes at this point. I would say that if there’s a coach that Tepper wants out there, and that coach wants his own GM as a precondition, I don’t think Tepper will let his feelings for Fitterer get in the way. But we’ll see.
