One of several teams making front office changes in the wake of the NFL draft, the Panthers have reportedly parted ways with director of player personnel Cole Spencer and long-time college scout Robert Haines, per Joe Person of The Athletic.
Starting his football career in football operations and coaching at Eastern Illinois, Spencer entered the NFL as a scouting intern for Washington in 2010. A year later, he was promoted to a regional scouting role, and he spent the next eight years scouting the northeast, midwest, and southeast regions. He spent his last two years in Washington as a national scout. Spencer left the Football Team to join the Panthers in 2021 as director of college scouting. Carolina promoted him to director of player personnel in 2023.
A local product, Haines has been with the Panthers for all 22 seasons of his career. He first started in Carolina with the team’s video department. In 2005, he moved into the personnel department as a college scouting assistant, getting promoted to pro scouting assistant in 2007, combine scout in 2008, and regional scout in 2010. For 11 seasons, Haines covered the northeast area (the source of Boston College product Luke Kuechly) before moving to the southeast area in 2021. In the final three seasons of his career, Haines served as a national scout.
While no announcements have been made as of yet, Person adds that the Panthers intend to “absorb” these positions internally with no immediate plans to replace Spencer or Haines. This means their responsibilities could end up just falling to existing personnel like director of college scouting Jared Kirksey and assistant director of college scouting David Whittington.
Hmm. Is it just me, or has there been significant turnover in Carolina’s scouting/personnel areas lately? Maybe I’m remembering it wrongly, but I seem to recall a few stories along these lately. Anyway, if it’s true, we’ll see what it amounts to. Hopefully it helps Carolina improve overalll.
I think anywhere you look in that organization you find a revolving door. Tepper has the patience of a 5 yr old boy waiting for Santa on Christmas day. He doesn’t understand that the successful franchises take the time to build continuity into their structure.
Don’t comment on the team is you don’t understand what’s going on. Dan Morgan kept a lot of people in place under the previous regime and as he grows into his role he’s putting more of his people in place. The more Morgan gets established, the stronger the overall organization has looked.
The only reason Morgan is GM is because he was a former first round pick of the Panthers. Tepper will allow him to fail for a couple of years and then send him on his way.