Former Carolina Panthers head coach Frank Reich was minding his own business last week, shopping at a Costco in Greensboro, when the call came in that would change the next year of his life.
On the other end of the line was Andrew Luck, the former NFL quarterback and now the general manager of Stanford’s football team. Luck had called on his former coach for some big things before — Reich, who is also a minister, once officiated the marriage ceremony for Luck and his wife. Now Luck was asking Reich to do something else big — serve as interim head football coach at Stanford, but only for one season. No more. No less.
Reich, 63, had turned down several NFL assistant coaching jobs since Panthers owner David Tepper unceremoniously fired him 11 games into a four-year contract in November 2023. The Panthers were 1-10 at the time. The coach certainly didn’t need the money. That Carolina contract was fully guaranteed, and Reich was only halfway through it.
But Reich has always appreciated a challenge. If he took the job, he would get one season to try and help turn around a program that has had four straight 3-9 seasons. Luck had just fired Stanford’s previous coach, Troy Taylor, shortly after an ESPN report that detailed two investigations of Taylor involving allegations of hostile and aggressive behavior toward female staff members.
Then, in 2026, Reich would go back home to Greensboro and Luck would hire his permanent head coach. Reich’s Stanford gig — which almost sounds like a one-year visiting professorship — would be over. It was a job where you could see the end right at the beginning.
Reich said in his press conference Tuesday in California that he told the Stanford players in his first meeting Monday: “This is unique. Let’s embrace it together. This can be something to remember. This can be very special.”
As for himself and Luck, who Reich coached in 2018 at Indianapolis in what turned out to be Luck’s final NFL season, the coach said: “This is what we were both looking for. This is the perfect scenario for both of us…. And just because it’s a one-year deal does not mean that we can’t take a major step to helping fulfill the vision.”
Reich becomes the second former Panthers head coach to move to California for a new job in the past few weeks. Ron Rivera, the Panthers’ winningest all-time coach, just accepted the football general manager job at his alma mater, California. Now he and Reich will both be working in the new-look ACC.
I’m not sure how many games Stanford can win for Reich in 2025, but I think he’ll do a decent job moving the program toward what Luck wants. No coach wants to go out on a 1-10 record and only last 10 months on the job, as Reich did in 2023.
I still remember speaking to Reich by phone the day he got fired. Reich said in part: “There’s a heart-pounding disappointment in not hitting the marks that we needed to hit to keep this going and try to get it turned around.”
Classy to the end, Reich also told me that day he harbored “no hard feelings” toward Tepper and that he would always be a Panthers fan.
Longtime Carolina fans remember that Reich was the Panthers’ first-ever starting quarterback, in 1995, after spending the majority of his NFL career backing up Jim Kelly in Buffalo.
The day Tepper fired him was one of Reich’s worst days in the NFL, but he handled it with grace. Reich even said he understood why Tepper let him go.
“The NFL is a meritocracy,” Reich said. “It’s not unconditional love.”
College football is also a meritocracy, but this job will be different. Reich has been brought in as a stopgap measure, to add some stability to a program in dire need of some after the previous coach’s surprise exit.
But despite those four straight 3-9 seasons, Stanford football isn’t a lost cause. It has been good before. Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw coached there. Christian McCaffrey and Luck played there. If Reich can go 6-6, he’ll be hailed as a hero in Palo Alto.
Even if that does happen, though, Reich and Luck both made it clear that there’s no way Reich is getting the permanent job. Luck will be looking for a new head coach at the end of the 2025 season. He and Reich are close friends and understand each other, but they also are going to need to feel out their new relationship. It was Luck who did most of the talking at the duo’s joint press conference Tuesday, and it’s undeniably Luck’s program.
This is quite a difference from the last time the two worked together in 2018, with Reich as the Indianapolis head coach and playcaller and Luck as the quarterback. “He’s the boss,” Reich said of Luck, chuckling. “I was the boss the last time. So I can do that for one season, maybe.”
Reich will do fine. Maybe better than fine. And then maybe Reich will take another job, even in the NFL. It’s hard to get the rhythm of football out of your blood. Reich has another chance to grab a whistle and try to make some young men better. And I’ll bet this one is going to work out better than the Panthers job did.
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Columnist Scott Fowler has written for The Charlotte Observer since 1994. He has earned 24 national APSE sportswriting awards and hosted The Observer’s podcast “Carruth,” which Sports Illustrated once named “Podcast of the Year.” Fowler hosts the online series and podcast “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” which features 1-on-1 interviews with NC and SC sports icons. He also writes occasionally about non-sports subjects, such as the 5-part series “9/11/74,” which chronicled the plane crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 in Charlotte in 1974.