Matt Rhule's Terrible Jay-Z Analogy Should Be Greatly Worrying For Panthers

The Carolina Panthers didn't put up anything resembling a fight on Sunday, losing their 10th game of the season to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by the score of 32-6. Matt Rhule once again shuffled through multiple quarterbacks in the same game without any rhyme or reason. Carolina is in Year 2 of their rebuild and they are not a better team in any way than when they hired Rhule to oversee said rebuild.

Rhule defended himself and his process after Sunday's blowout loss by preaching patience, which was predictable. But the manner in which he preached this patience should be worrying for the Panthers.

Okay. A lot to unpack here. Let's start with the easiest flaw to point out-- Rhule said it took Jay-Z seven years to become an overnight sensation. One does not become an overnight sensation after years of work. It just took seven years for everything to pay off.

But we'll move off that because it doesn't really matter in the eyes of the message Rhule is trying to send, which is that these things take time. Well, the problem is that Rhule is being paid to ensure it does not take seven years for the Panthers to be good again. Part of what makes Jay-Z's story so remarkable is that he had to pull himself up by his boostraps, as the saying goes. There was no backup plan. If Jay-Z didn't make it big, he had nothing.

Rhule is getting paid $8.5 million this season alone, in the second year of a $60 million contract. If things don't work out and he fails, Rhule can sleep well at night knowing he'll have over fifty freaking million dollars in his bank account. That is a very big difference from where Jay-Z was at before he made it big. As Rhule would know if he actually listened to any of the lyrics to the songs.

Rhule is not working on a seven-year timeline, even if his contract runs through the next four years. The NFL doesn't have the patience he's preaching. Results are expected immediately, even if the Panthers were in a true rebuild. Instead, they're spending a lot of money on average players to keep competitive-- and Rhule still can't put together a winning squad. Or even an okay squad. The Panthers are bad. They were bad last year and they're bad again this year.

It took Jay-Z seven years to become famous. It will take Rhule far less time than that to become unemployed if things continue on this path.