Matt Rhule opens up about the roots of his appreciation for versatility in his players

Matt Rhule has a longstanding history of going after top-end athletes, and that has carried over into his time as the head coach of the Carolina Panthers. Rhule has always looked for versatile players, especially ones that ran track and played other sports. That began during his time at Temple, and was prominent when he took over at Baylor.

As the Panthers scouted players ahead of the 2022 NFL Draft, versatility was a key trait that Rhule was looking for. But that’s nothing new for him.

“If you go back in my history, like when I was at Temple I had our starting quarterback, I let him go play baseball in the spring,” Rhule said. “I’m completely against specialization at the young ages, so I’m certainly against it certainly in college. The more you can do, the more you can do. You’re either going to be out running track or playing video games.

“I think we had seven kids from Baylor that were at the Combine, I think three of them posted the fastest times at their positions. Those were all the same classes. Coop led the recruiting as recruiting coordinator. We called it ‘be fast,’ and we went out and found players that can run track and play football. And that was a history, that goes all the way back to RG3. I believe he won the Big 12 in the 400-meter hurdles or something like that as a freshman.”

The Panthers added versatility in Kalon Barnes, a former player under Rhule at Baylor

One player that Rhule coached at Baylor was cornerback Kalon Barnes, who began his career as a track star and a wide receiver once he hit the gridiron. Rhule then switched him to a defensive back, and he turned himself into a draft pick. The team that took Barnes was a familiar one, as Rhule’s Panthers took him in the seventh round.

“Kalon, we had a spring scrimmage where I told Coop, ‘Look, he’s running track this afternoon, just give him a couple reps.’ And then Coop, whom I love, forgot that I said that and practiced him the whole practice. Live, tackling, the whole deal. Kalon goes in, showers, changes, walks, goes across the river to the track and runs like a 10.43. He was distraught that he ran a 10.4, but he was that kind of track athlete. We had a bunch of guys doing that, though. We had JT Woods who got drafted this year. So we recognized pretty early there that for us, we weren’t going to beat the likes of Texas, Oklahoma in recruiting. So we were going to go find the biggest, fastest, most explosive guys we could.

“Then guys like Phil Snow would teach them the game and would work out. So that’s why we had so much faith in Kalon. I remember going and watching him in high school, he was like 10.1. We had to recruit against track. He either had a choice to take money or play football for us, that’s literally the opportunities he had. Brought him in as a receiver, moved him to corner, saw that he had technique, but most importantly saw that he wasn’t a track guy. He had the football mindset which is really important.”