CHARLOTTE, NC – The Carolina Panthers are hoping Scott Fitterer will do for them what helped the Seattle Seahawks do after the 2013 season.
Win a Super Bowl.
Seattle’s vice president of football operations, 47, was hired as Panthers general manager on Thursday, the team announced.
He was chosen from three other finalists, Kansas City Chiefs player deputy director Ryan Poles (35), San Francisco 49ers player vice president Adam Peters (41) and Tennessee Titans player vice president Monti Ossenfort (42).
Fitterer was a late addition to the search, but, according to sources, quickly impressed the search panel.
Carolina interviewed 15 candidates overall to replace Marty Hurney, who was fired with two remaining games in a 5-11 2020 season. Among them were two internal candidates, the players ’bargaining director and salary cap manager Samir Suleiman and the player’s personnel director, Pat Stewart.
Each of the finalists fits the job description of being relatively young and with a solid Scouting background to work collaboratively with head coach Matt Rhule to identify talent. Owner David Tepper was also looking for a data-driven CEO.
Rhule will have the final decisions on the 53-man roster, according to sources with hiring knowledge, similar to what Andy Reid has with Kansas City and Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots.
However, NFL Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian warned not to take too much away.
“That’s very, very, very exaggerated,” said Polian, who helped Indianapolis win a Super Bowl during the 2006 season and built a Buffalo roster that went to four Super Bowls in a row in the early 1990s. “An effort between the GM and the boss The coach and the coaching staff have to get the 53 best players and, if there are problems, it is almost always decided in favor of the head coach. He has to go and play.
“I only had two situations in my entire career and in both cases he followed the path that the head coach wanted to take.”
Fitterer has been with Seattle since 2001, initially as an explorer in the area. He rose in the chain to his current position, where he has worked closely with general manager John Schneider to turn the Seahawks into a perennial playoff team.
Fitterer has interviewed several general manager jobs in the league in recent years. In his first four years as director of college scouting, he selected 13 players who eventually became starters.
Fitterer was a college sports athlete, played quarterback and pitched at UCLA and LSU. He spent three years in the Toronto Blue Jays minor league system before turning to football as a part-time scout for the New York Giants in 1998.