The Panthers' defense disappointed in 2019.
In 2020, the same unit that set records for rushing touchdowns allowed (31), while finishing with the second-most sacks (53), will have a completely new look.
Leading that group will be defensive coordinator Phil Snow, who spoke with the media for the first time Tuesday. Snow joins the Panthers after spending the last seven years with head coach Matt Rhule (at Temple and then Baylor). The pair have known each other since meeting in 2001 when the roles were reversed and Rhule was Snow's graduate assistant at UCLA.
"We've got great respect for each other, he's really a good football man, really a good head football coach," Snow said of Rhule. "Players like him. We just have a great relationship. When we took the Carolina job, he asked me if I would come with him and I said, 'as the coordinator?' And he said 'yes,' so here we are."
Things are still early for Snow and the Panthers. After spending a week in Charlotte, Snow, along with the rest of the team's coaching staff, spent a week at the Senior Bowl looking at prospective talent and getting to know each other. He joked that he had yet to see any parts of Charlotte outside of his new office and hotel he is staying at because of how busy he has been.
When asked what the Panthers' defense could look like over the next year, Snow didn't have a lot of answers. Not only will he and the defensive staff need to complete looking over the personnel that will be on the roster in 2020, but with seven defensive starters entering free agency, in addition to linebacker Luke Kuechly retiring this offseason, there are still plenty of unanswered questions surrounding who those players will be.
What kind of defense the Panthers run will depend on what their personnel is. Snow said that they will fit the scheme to their players, much in the same way that new offensive coordinator Joe Brady explained how the Panthers' offense will work.
"I've done just about everything on defense over the years, and last year at Baylor, we were a three-man front," Snow said. "We'll be multiple, but what's smart to do is use the people that you have. Our team is not set up yet, there's a lot of things that have to happen before we know what we have, so we'll utilize the people that we have and we're going to be multiple anyway, so you'll see us in four-man, three-man. You'll see us in a lot of different stuff. I think today you have to be multiple to give the offense some problems from a schematic standpoint."
As far as replacing Kuechly, Snow said they are still evaluating the defense and did not have any comments on defensive assistants, including possibly adding a passing game coordinator compliment defensive coach Al Holcomb, who will reportedly be the team's run game coordinator.
Unlike the offenses that Brady has been a part of, there is less of a consistent theme among Snow's past defenses throughout his career, beginning as a defensive coordinator in 1980. While he has mostly coached on the college level, he did spend 2005-08 with the Lions. After the Panthers drafted and signed players that fit the team's switch to more of a 3-4 defense in 2019 (which ended up being a more of hybrid defense), Snow's flexibility should help the group in transition.
During his time at Baylor, Snow showed off his ability to adapt his defense to the players' strengths. For the first two years in Waco, they ran a 4-3 base, partly due to the inexperience of players the Bears had at the time.
In 2019, the team switched to a 3-3-5 (or 30 "stack") defense because Snow was able to adapt. He had more speed on the field with more experienced players. It also helped defend the Big 12's bevy of spread offenses.
It worked well. Last year, Baylor gave up the fewest points per game in the conference (19.3) after allowing the second and third-most in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The Bears also led the Big 12 in takeaways per game and sacks after being in the bottom half of the conference in both in '17 and '18.
"Normally, I've gone to places and turned them around in one to two years, we actually did it in the third year (at Baylor)," Snow said. "The reason (is) we started with 20 freshman and they had to grow up a little bit. We've had good success if we can coach players in two to three years and they normally end up playing pretty well. It's a developmental issue and we got them to a point where they understand football while playing it the way it's supposed to be played."
He will no doubt use those ideas when figuring out the best defensive scheme for the Panthers, building around players such as Kawann Short and Shaq Thompson, two of the biggest pieces sure to return. Snow was also known at Baylor for having a substantially sized playbook, which will likely be easier for NFL players to learn than younger college athletes.
Many questions exist about what this defense will look like, but what is clear is that the 64-year old coordinator is taking a modern approach when stating that the defense will not have just one scheme in 2020. With the changes ahead for the Panthers, there's a lot of uncertainty for the unit, but Snow does have some core tenets of his group to keep in mind.
"We're going to play (defense) fast and physical and you have to create turnovers and not give up big plays. That's what we're all trying to do," Snow said. "If you characterize a good defense, they play fast or physical, they don't give up plays and they create turnovers, so that's what everything we design is intended to do."
