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In a sense, this insane Panthers quarterback situation feels familiar.
“John Fox came up to me on Wednesday and said Vinny Testaverde did this three years ago,” sudden starter Brian St. Pierre said Thursday via the Rock Hill Herald. “I said, ‘Well, Vinny has a little better resume than I do.’ “
Even St. Pierre knows this situation is different. He was putting diapers on his kid two weeks ago. He’s 30, and has thrown five career passes. Fox didn’t have much in the way of explanation of why St. Pierre got the call over rookie Tony Pike, who has been with the team since April
“It is what it is,” Fox said.
Some think it’s a mutiny. “The decision to start St. Pierre also is remarkable in that Fox apparently can do whatever he wants whenever he wants to,” Tom Sorensen of the Charlotte Observer writes.
The decision could be Fox’s way of thumbing his nose at G.M. Matty Hurney and the front office. By this logic, Fox may even be trying to get fired with open disrespect.
From the outside, it looks like perhaps Fox believes the veteran gives the team a better chance to win. But the guys on the beat know the organizational dynamics far better than we ever will.
“Fox is acting like he’s got his next job in hand already. Because otherwise, you wouldn’t so blatantly and wantonly disrespect the boss who’s paying you $6.5 million or the GM you call a friend,” Darin Gantt (from every paper in the Carolinas) wrote on Twitter.
“I’ve wracked my brain, and for the life of me, can’t find a rational reason for this move, other than pure spite,” Gantt finishes.
Fox continues to distance himself from the “personnel people” in Carolina. By doing so, he’s helping to write an awfully ugly final chapter to his otherwise successful nine-year run with the Panthers.