As Carolina Panthers general manager Marty Hurney accurately noted months ago about his job: “there is pressure.”
Pressure to win. Pressure to produce. Pressure to direct a franchise to success despite being maybe 75 percent into a re-tooling project.
At some point, under all that duress, an ownership-driven fracture was inevitable. And that’s why head coach Ron Rivera is without a job today. New team owner David Tepper saw a part of the franchise that wasn’t recovering according to his expectations, so he broke it again in hopes of mending it in the fashion he believed was necessary.