Mac & Bone Podcast

While the expectation that the Panthers will end up keeping Matt Rhule for his third season with the Carolina Panthers, yesterday's firing of Joe Judge by the New York Giants has some wondering whether or not there is still a chance that David Tepper could still make the move for a new head coach. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk was on with the Panthers earlier this morning and said that we won't really know what the exact decision until Tepper comes out and confirms it. Florio believes that Jay Glazer, who reported that Daivd Tepper is looking for Matt Rhule to hire a rockstar offensive coordinator, is right and that Tepper could be waiting to see what Rhule comes up with before making an official decision, something that he says is crazy.

For the first time since 1980, Georgia Bulldogs fans are waking up as national champions in the sport of football. After four losses for Kirby Smart against his mentor Nick Saban, all of which saw Georgia hold double-digit leads, Smart helped rally the Bulldogs with 20 4th quarter points including two touchdown passes for quarterback Stetson Bennett who had looked rather shaky before then. The Georgia defense was picked apart by Bryce Young for 369 yards despite throwing a lot of pressure at him but the bowed up where it mattered, in the red zone. The Crimson Tide had four trips inside the 20 on the night, but came away with just one touchdown in large part due to the pressure that they were able to get on Young. The Bulldogs also forced Young into a couple of key mistakes, including the game-sealing pick-six by Kelee Ringo in the final minute of the game with Alabama attempting to drive the field.

The college basketball season has started to heat up, as conference play is in full swing. Believe it or not, we are just under 9 weeks away from receiving the 68 team bracket, for the 2022 NCAA Tournament. Duke entered the season with high expectations, as they brought in another loaded recruiting class, for Coach K's final season as their head coach. The Blue Devils have earned some marquee wins early on in the season, topping both Kentucky and Gonzaga on neutral floors. Their only blemish before Saturday's loss home to Miami was at Ohio State, a team with legitimate Big 10 title aspirations. One of those highly touted incoming freshmen was Paolo Banchero, who will be a lottery pick later this summer in the NBA Draft. While Banchero has lived up to the hype, as he's averaging over 17 points per game, you could make the argument he hasn't been the best player for Duke this season. That title belongs to junior Wendell Moore Jr, who is averaging over 16 points, nearly 6 rebounds, and 5 assists per game. After an up and down start to his college career, the game has slowed down for Moore, and he is reaping the benefits, and earning praise for his play. Former ACC standout Randolph Childress, joined the Mac Attack this morning, and had this to say about Moore's play"

With the Panthers heading into the final week of the regular season out of the playoff race, the focus for the Panther fan base seems to be on positioning the team in the best spot in the draft to get a piece that this team desperately needs. Left tackle is the spot that most people are looking at with the Panthers top ten pick with names like Evan Neal, Ikem Ekwonu and Charles Cross amongst those that are being looked at in this range as part of a strong tackle class.

The Tar Heel football team in 2021 was riddled with inconsistencies and the same looks as if it can be said for the Tar Heel basketball team so far this season. Following arguably the best all-around performance of the season against Boston College, the Tar Heels were picked apart on Wednesday night by a less than stellar Notre Dame, especially on the defensive end of the floor. The Fighting Irish shot 47.5% (29-61) overall on the night and 41.9% (13-31) from beyond the arc in what was another questionable effort defensively from the Tar Heel that left fans with something to desire.

As we head towards the eighteenth and final week of the longest season in Panther history both figuratively and literally, all of the attention is focused on head coach Matt Rhule and whether or not the head coach will return for a third season. Following a 3-0 start, the Panthers have proceeded to lose 11 of the last 13 games and take a proverbial step back from the season that they had a year ago. Rhule currently has the worst record in the first 32 games of a coaching tenure in franchise history, as he sits at 10-22 heading into Sunday's meeting with the Buccaneers in Tampa Bay and as Joe Person of The Athletic reported on Friday, there is talk that David Tepper is unhappy and frustrated with the results based on the contract that he signed Rhule to when he brought him in.

Sunday's loss to the New Orleans Saints may have been the Panthers eleventh loss in thirteen games but it seems like many around the league are still sold on the fact that the Panthers will be hanging on to head coach Matt Rhule for year number three. While there have been a lot of people that have seemed to come around to the idea of Rhule coming back, one guest on the Mac Attack earlier today said that this would be a bad move for the Panthers and owner David Tepper.

The story of Sam Darnold and the Carolina Panthers is a confusing one. For some reason the Panther front office signed his fifth-year rookie extension earlier this offseason without even seeing him play a game as a starter at the NFL level. After a strong start to the season in the first three and a half games of the season, Darnold's season has taken a turn for the worse, as he has thrown for just 200 yards once since Week 4 after doing so in each of the first four weeks and has just a 2-9 TD-INT ratio since that Dallas game.

The 2021 Tar Heel football season mercifully came to an end on Thursday afternoon in Bank of America Stadium with a disastrous 38-21 loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks, a team that came in with one of the worst offenses in all of college football. That loss may have been the final time that Sam Howell will suit up in his college football career and, like it seemed happened too often during his three year career in Chapel Hill, he walked away with a loss that he did everything to avoid with his play at the quarterback position. Howell has yet to make his intentions for his future public yet, but if this is it, it's hard not to feel like the Tar Heels weren't able to do enough with the best quarterback in school history.

Prior to Sunday's home finale against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it was announced that the Carolina Panthers and owner David Tepper were leaning towards bringing Matt Rhule back for his third season in Charlotte. Following that report, the team would proceed to beat down by a depleted Bucs team 32-6, though, looking lifeless throughout the majority of the game and failing to score a touchdown in a game for the third time this season. Later that night, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk said on Football Night America that Matt Rhule is someone to keep an eye on in terms of his job status.