Bobby Slowik: It worked for CJ Stroud

The Carolina Panthers have already seen what he can do with an offense led by a young quarterback.

Something interesting happened in Vegas late last week. According to this series of Tweets (or X posts or whatever) from Jaime Eisner, Bobby Slowik’s odds of becoming the next head coach of the Carolina Panthers went from 18-to-1 to 5-to-1 over the course of 11 days. I haven’t seen any news to correspond with that spike in odds, but stuff like that usually doesn’t happen without a reason.

With the Texans eliminated from the postseason, Slowik has been taking interviews with seemingly every team with a head coaching vacancy. That started with the Panthers in the middle of last week.

Bobby Slowik is a member of the hottest coaching tree in the biz right now. He got his start in the NFL ranks as a defensive assistant in Washington under Mike Shanahan. After the dismissal of Shanahan and most of his staff, Slowik latched on with Pro Football Focus, where he served as a senior analyst. He made his way back into the NFL as a defensive quality control coach with the 49ers under Mike’s son Kyle Shanahan. After two years in that role, he flipped over to the offensive side of the ball where he ascended from offensive assistant to pass game specialist to passing game coordinator over the course of four seasons. He then departed to take on the offensive coordinator position under DeMeco Ryans with the Houston Texans.

Slowik quickly joined the crowd of hotshot coordinators destined to be head coaches after the world was exposed to his offense led by rookie CJ Stroud. Stroud had one of the best rookie seasons the NFL has ever seen, and Slowik gets a lot of credit for that. Stroud led all quarterbacks that played half the season with 273.9 passing yards per game. The rushing attack wasn’t nearly as good, but they had an offensive line that struggled to get push and a less-than-stellar cast in the backfield. But on the whole, he led an above average offense, which is very rare for a group led by a rookie quarterback. But more importantly than that, the scheming and principles are highly regarded by seemingly everyone that understands the game of football.

There are a couple of angles to hiring Slowik. On a deeper level, Slowik has all of the requisite experience you’d want on a coaching resume, albeit in a very accelerated manner. He’s coached on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball and has an analytical background. Obviously he’s thrived in every one of his roles given how quickly he climbed the organizational ladder under Kyle Shanahan.

On the simple side, he helped CJ Stroud become a superstar. The Panthers want their quarterback that was drafted ahead of CJ Stroud to also be a superstar. Why not get the guy who coordinated CJ Stroud’s rise to superstardom to coordinate Bryce Young’s rise to superstardom? Right? It’s really that simple.

On the literal superficial and most irrelevant parts of sports fandom levels, we talked about Dave Canales’s handsomeness in his profile. Given that precedent, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Slowik could play the role of a high school student should he take up acting. His hiring would also expand the list that always goes around of former Washington assistants that are coaching (and hopefully having success) all around the league but not in Washington. On the other hand, if Bryce Young doesn’t have success under Slowik, it really makes the Stroud vs Young debates that much more cut and dry. A lot to consider there and I don’t really know what any of it means.

Bobby Slowik’s contributions to the upstart Texans are certainly appealing for a downtrodden Panthers team that hopes to be upstart before long. The Texans were bottom of the league offensively and won a total of seven games in the two years before Ryan and Slowik’s arrivals. They did a full 180 under the new regime. It’d be hard to fault the Panthers for trying to catch that same lightning in a bottle, and Slowik’s resume suggests that he could make that happen.