Carolina Panthers coach Matt Rhule trusting Jeff Nixon’s call | Charlotte Observer

When Jeff Nixon was being recruited out of high school in Pennsylvania, Matt Rhule, then his teammate and best friend, used to make VHS tapes of his football highlights to send to colleges.

Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You” played in the background as Nixon ran past defenders.

The friendship between Rhule and Nixon dates back to 1991 at State College Area High School, where Rhule was a center and Nixon was one of the state’s top running backs.

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Nixon, now 47, still has some of those tapes and occasionally he will pull them out and show the highlights to his wife, Laura, and their four children, who range from 16 years old to 20.

The tapes are a reminder of how long Rhule and Nixon’s friendship has spanned, and how far Nixon has come in football from a West Virginia running back to transferring to Penn State to becoming one of the few Black offensive coordinators in the NFL.

When Rhule fired Joe Brady from his O.C. perch two weeks ago, he turned to Nixon to take over play-calling duties.

And Nixon, a senior offensive assistant for the Panthers who has 22 years of experience at the college and NFL levels, could be the Panthers’ next full-time offensive coordinator if things go right over the final four games of the season. And if not for the Panthers, then another team.

In a league where there are only five Black offensive coordinators, that is significant.

“I know in the past there really hasn’t been a lot of people that look like me in this position,” Nixon said. “So I don’t take that lightly. I’m gonna try to do my best and represent others like me, do the best job I can and help our guys win.”

The Panthers enter Sunday’s game at Buffalo at 5-8 after starting the 2021 season 3-0. The playoffs are just about out of reach with four games left in the season with FiveThirtyEight giving Carolina a 0.4% chance of making the postseason. At this point, the Panthers are just trying to find ways to improve and win.

Offense is where they need to improve the most.

In Nixon’s first game calling plays for the Panthers, they finished with 334 yards of total offense. And while that wasn’t much, it was an improvement from the Panthers’ previous two games (both losses) where they failed to reach 200 yards against Miami and 300 against Washington.

The Panthers also passed for more than 200 yards for the first time since Week 6.

Nixon’s ability will be tested Sunday. The Bills have the best defense in the NFL, allowing only 288 yards, and 17.6 points per game.

Rhule said he chose Nixon to call plays over the likes of quarterbacks coach Sean Ryan and other assistants because Nixon had experience doing it as the co-offensive coordinator at Baylor from 2017-19. Before that, he spent 10 NFL seasons as an NFL assistant.

“He’s going to play to the guys’ strengths,” Rhule said of Nixon. “He’s disciplined. He’s not emotional.”

Love for football

One of the first times Elisa Nixon-Cobb realized her son’s passion for football was when he was in the fifth grade.

He’d spend hours throwing around the football outside with his younger brother, Patrick. And when they’d come inside, they’d grab a few sheets of paper and cut out paper men with legs and arms and use them as pretend football players.

“Jeff, he probably would be embarrassed,” Nixon-Cobb, a retired college professor, said with a laugh.

The two brothers ran plays with the paper men like a chess game.

“He was already strategizing what they should have done, could have done in order to score a touchdown,” she said.

Nixon had an ability at a young age to break down each position and understand why teams failed on certain plays. He knew all the stats and he knew each position and who was supposed to do what on each play.

Growing up in Rochester, Pennsylvania, right outside of Pittsburgh, he was a Cleveland Browns fan because of his father, Bill.

“We’d watch all the games together all the time,” Bill Nixon said. “He just loved football.”

His mom moved the family to State College, Pennsylvania, after his parents divorced as she pursued a degree at Penn State.

Elisa Nixon-Cobb kept her children involved in sports. Jeff Nixon played football and baseball, and his dad insists Nixon was an “excellent baseball player,” too.

But football was his love.

“He and Patrick would be in the bedroom, and I would be in the kitchen, and I would think they were arguing,” his mother said. “They were debating about players and teams.”

‘Not afraid to be bold’

Throughout his career, Nixon has developed a reputation as a hard worker, whose worth ethic exceeded most. Nixon had known since college that he wanted to coach, and in 1997 he got his chance as a graduate assistant at Penn State under Joe Paterno. From there, he had stops at Princeton, Division II Shippensburg, Chattanooga and Temple before getting a break in the NFL.

“Let me say something, if he was available I would have hired him (on his staff),” Texans head coach David Culley, who is in his first season with the team, told The Observer. “That’s how I feel about him.”

Culley and Nixon worked together for the Eagles on Andy Reid’s staff. Nixon worked as a quality control coach while Culley coached wide receivers, and their offices were across from each other.

Culley said Nixon not only studied offenses, but also he studied defenses as well during his time with the Eagles.

“We knew at some point this guy was going to end up coaching at the NFL level,” Culley said.

Former Eagles assistant head coach Marty Mornhinweg echoed Culley’s sentiments. He said it was apparent early on how knowledgeable Nixon was of the game and his passion for it.

“The players respect him and love to play for him,” Mornhinweg said. “I know he’ll do a fantastic job.”

After the Eagles, Nixon spent time with the Dolphins and 49ers as an assistant before he eventually got the chance to show what he could do as a play-caller at Baylor with Rhule. With him calling the plays, Baylor’s offense took off.

In 2017, Nixon’s first season, Baylor ranked 98th in the country in points per game at 24.3. In 2019, the Bears had improved to 27th nationally, averaging 32.5 per game.

The turning point, Rhule said, was a 2019 game against TCU. The Bears had fourth-and-5 from the TCU 20-yard line in overtime and they trailed by a touchdown.

The play Nixon called, dubbed “Detroit,” wasn’t in the game plan but it was designed to go to their best player, receiver Denzel Mims, who ran a skinny post and caught it for a touchdown to send the game to a second overtime. Baylor beat TCU 29-23 in triple overtime and eventually played in the Sugar Bowl that season.

“He adapted to the situation and what they were doing,” Rhule told the Observer of Nixon’s call. “To me, Jeff wasn’t afraid to take a chance. He wasn’t afraid to be bold.”

Room for improvement

Nixon still has plenty to show.

One of the biggest concerns Rhule had with Brady was his inability to make adjustments mid-game. When teams adapted to the Panthers’ offense, Carolina had trouble countering that. Through the first 12 games of the season, the Panthers had only 18 offensive points in third quarters — fewest in the NFL.

“The biggest thing I want to see from him, in addition to the staff, is our ability to adjust when people do something different,” Rhule said last week.

Nixon started to show that last Sunday in the team’s loss to Atlanta.

Take what he did with Panthers receiver Robby Anderson, for example. He led the Panthers in receptions in 2020 but is having the worst statistical season of his career this year. He had a season-high six catches for 84 yards and a touchdown against the Falcons.

Anderson said he felt the most prepared he’s ever been his season and credited Nixon for that.

The Panthers opened the third quarter against the Falcons with a touchdown. They had a chance to score another, but a fumble from Newton caused the Panthers to lose momentum.

Under Nixon, the Panthers ran a lot of no-huddle offense. They threw some screens early and allowed receivers to make plays.

“I thought Jeff did a nice job yesterday,” Rhule said Monday. “I thought the tempo was there, I thought there were guys open. That was one of the better passing days we’ve had in some time.”

There are still things the Panthers must get cleaned up. While they often moved the ball efficiently, Newton and backup quarterback P.J. Walker each had an interception. And Newton’s turnovers were the difference in the Panthers’ loss to the Falcons.

Walker said the plays from Nixon need to come in quicker to the quarterbacks, which is an adjustment Nixon is making after his first game in the booth in two seasons with the Panthers.

“The two-minute (offense) was a little different,” Walker said. “But I think once he gets rolling, he gets rolling. We’ve just got to find ways to communicate a little better and get plays from up top down onto the field.”

Cares about players

Nixon, now a father of four, has a son, William, 20, playing football at Nebraska. His two twin daughters, Faith and Hope, 18, go to South Carolina, and his youngest daughter, Jasmine, 16, plays travel soccer in high school.

He’s often seen at practice with a smile, teaching or joking with a player in a one-on-one conversation. Panthers wide receivers coach Frisman Jackson, who worked with Nixon at Baylor, said Nixon’s best trait is how personable he is, and how he cares about his players.

He said for Nixon, it’s more than football.

“Seeing how much he cares and wants someone to be successful,” Jackson said, “and doesn’t care who gets the credit. He doesn’t care if he gets the credit. He just wants the people around him and his players to be successful. “

Added Panthers running back Ameer Abdullah: “He coaches from an understanding standpoint as opposed to just like, ‘Do your job,’ which I think is good for a lot of young players.”

When Rhule became the Panthers’ head coach, he decided to hire Brady as his offensive coordinator because he said he wanted to make a bold hire. That decision led to a difficult conversation he had to have with his best friend of 30 years.

When asked why he didn’t hire Nixon at the time, he declined to say, adding that he hired Brady because he liked his background coming from the Saints and their creativity with the passing game.

But he said on a personal level he’s hopeful Nixon does a great job and it leads to further opportunities for him. From the VHS tapes in high school, they’ve been talking about these moments for years.

“If I had named someone else the O.C., I know Jeff would have come to work with the same attitude because all he cares about is winning, and giving the players the best chance to be successful,” Rhule said.

“That’s what makes him a special guy.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2021 7:00 AM.