Matt Rhule reveals how playing multiple sports can be a benefit for college athletes

Some of the top players in the NFL are known for playing multiple sports growing especially, especially through high school. It’s something Carolina Panthers head coach Matt Rhule looks for within the players they draft and the organization followed that philosophy during the 2022 NFL Draft.

After another rookie minicamp on Sunday, Rhule talked about how he thinks playing multiple sports can benefit players as they work their way toward the NFL. He talked about how it’s hard to play football all year round when you compared it to something like basketball and playing other sports can keep your competitive fire.

“Well, I think growing up, the hand-eye coordination, tracking the ball,” Rhule started. “You’ll hear a lot of old coaches talk about how they miss having guys playing baseball. They used to play football and baseball. Now, it’s track but playing centerfield, tracking the ball, all those different things, they kind of miss a little bit in today’s football. When you’re a football player coming up, you can’t really play football in the offseason. Like, if you’re a basketball player you can play AAU, you can do all of those things. If you’re a football player — now, 7 on 7 has been coming along which is great. Developing skills but there’s something about walking out onto the mat, onto the court, onto wherever and winning and losing. Competing, working as a teammate.”

Matt Rhule scouts players after multisport development

Rhule went on to explain some of the things the Panthers look at when scouting players. The debate between quickness vs speed is something they look at heavily and it’s something Rhule thinks really gets developed by playing another non-football sport.

“As a football player, the hand-eye coordination, the lateral quickness. We talk a lot about the 40-yard dashes, we spend a lot of time looking at people’s short shuffles, three cones. Like how quick, how explosive. You can be fast but you may not be very quick and vice versa. I think a lot of those things are developed early on for kids as they play different sports. Then, they come to football and they love to tackle or don’t. They have to hit or they don’t. I just thought it was good.

Panthers trying to run a competitive program

From there, Rhule went on to talk about how he is going to run a competitive program, even if everyone is a professional. It could be something as simple as figuring out who the fastest player in the organization is but the Panthers’ players want to win against each other.

“At the end of the day, our whole program, one of our core tendencies is competition. I want guys that love to compete. In college, if you can go play another sport, go play another sport. There’s a putting green in the locker room with tape where everyone made a putt from. So they compete in everything. If I say ‘hey, we’re going to run 40-yard dashes for conditioning,’ they’ll do it. If I say ‘we’re going to see who the fastest guy is,” they’ll run seven 40-yard dashes to figure out who the fastest guy on this team is. To get to this level, you have to be highly competitive so that was always kind of my philosophy.”

The next step will be bringing that competitive edge to the football field, where Carolina will need to put a few results together this season. Rhule will be in a critical position and needs to get some wins. Nonetheless, the competitive spirit will be running through the building with Rhule in charge.