Panthers fire GM Marty Hurney

The Carolina Panthers will be shaking up their football operations department this offseason. Team owner David Tepper announced on Monday he has fired general manager Marty Hurney.

“I think sometimes you just need a restart, a refresh,” Tepper said. “We did it last year on the coaching side. Maybe you could say it should have been done before on the GM side. Maybe it should have been. I’m sure people may say that, or otherwise, on both sides.

“I think it’s just time, on both sides, to do that. It just seems like the right time to move forward.”

Hurney was Panthers GM from 2002 to 2012 before being fired and replaced by Dave Gettleman. Hurney returned to the role in an interim capacity in 2017 when the team fired Gettleman. Hurney was hired as the team’s permanent GM in 2018. Since Hurney returned to the role in the summer of 2017, the Panthers have gone 27-35. They reached the playoffs in 2017, although Gettleman likely was the primary architect of that year’s team.

The team hired Matt Rhule as head coach this past offseason, and Tepper said the head coach would be a participant in the GM search.

“You look at successful organizations, and there’s a certain alignment between the head coach and the GM,” Tepper said. “To think that you can do that without some sort of alignment is nuts. So to not have a head coach with some input into that is stupid. I don’t want to be stupid, OK?”