The Carolina Panthers have interviewed two Kansas City Chiefs execs for their GM job.
No one can ever accuse the Carolina Panthers of not doing their homework when it comes to hiring the right person for their general manager vacancy after moving on from Marty Hurney. To date they have interviewed 11 different candidates, with two of those coming from the Kansas City Chiefs organization in Ryan Poles and Brandt Tilis.
Both Tilis and Brandt have been identified as “rising stars,” so to speak, in personnel circles. It also makes sense that members of the Chiefs organization would be pursued by other teams given their win in Super Bowl LIV and overall sustained success for much of the last decade.
Tilis is currently the Chiefs director of football administration for the Chiefs and is often credited for much of the work around the team’s ability to work within the salary cap to still put together such lucrative contract extensions for Patrick Mahomes, Chris Jones, etc.
It's not easy to keep a stacked roster together in the NFL. Chiefs cap guru Brandt Tilis deserves a ton of credit for his work: it takes foresight, discipline, creativity and shrewd decision-making to make all this happen.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) July 14, 2020
On the other hand, Poles is the assistant director of player personnel for the Chiefs and has come up through the scouting side as the former director of college scouting for the organization.
It looks like Poles will interview Wednesday for the Carolina job. A rising star who we had on our watch list last week, the 35-year-old was Matt Ryan's left guard at Boston College.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) January 4, 2021
He's worked in a number of roles in climbing the ladder in KC. https://t.co/Z2RF4eRWcy
Both men are likely to earn plenty of future interest if passed over for this particular job, and at this juncture, it’s impossible to tell which way the Panthers might lean. Nick Caserio is now out of the running after being hired away by the Houston Texans, but that still leaves 10 candidates with maybe even more on the way. The list also includes promising young executives like Poles and Tilis alongside figures with decades more experience—even former GMs—like Jerry Reese or Jeff Ireland.
You can see a complete list of candidates with profiles here.