When the Panthers made the unexpected announcement that General Manager Dave Gettleman had been fired on Monday, many people pointed to ongoing contract situations with a pair of current veterans as part of the reason why the Panthers chose to make a change.
Linebacker Thomas Davis is one of those players, but he said Tuesday that there have been talks about a new deal and that he doesn’t think he or tight end Greg Olsen are so “important in the grand scheme of things” that they were the cause of Gettleman’s departure.
“We had actually engaged in contract talks,” Davis said, via Kelsey Riggs of WCNC. “They presented something and we presented something back and we were just in the process of negotiating. That’s what you do when you’re dealing with contracts and it’s really sad and disappointing when you hear all the people that’s saying that the reason Mr. Gettleman was released was because of me or Greg. I think that’s an unfair statement.”
Davis called owner Jerry Richardson’s decision to dispatch Gettleman “something we’re all going to live with” whether it had to do with the current contract talks, contentious departures of longtime Panthers in the past or other matters entirely. For Davis, the most pressing question is how long he is going to be living with it as a member of the Panthers now that someone else will be running the personnel shop in Charlotte.