Forged at Temple, Robby Anderson’s bond with Matt Rhule makes Panthers reunion special
Robby Anderson’s ascension into a $10-million-a-year NFL wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers was an uneven climb punctuated by falls. And once you learn more about it, the fact that Anderson has now reunited with Panthers head coach Matt Rhule in Charlotte makes more sense. The two have walked through a few fires together already.
Anderson and Rhule first teamed up in college at Temple — a star wide receiver and blossoming head coach.
Before that, though, Anderson was a little-used cornerback who mostly played special teams. And he was struggling academically, too. Rhule helped him when he needed it — twice.
Said Anderson of Rhule on Friday: “If it wasn’t for him, making things happen, I probably wouldn’t be in the position that I’m in.”
In 2013, Rhule took over as Temple’s head coach. Anderson was a redshirt sophomore cornerback, laboring on the second team. He was homesick, not loving his experience at Temple and recruited out of high school by another head coach, Steve Addazio, who by then had left for Boston College. Anderson abruptly quit Temple’s football team that spring and returned home to south Florida.
by late summer, Anderson had second thoughts and asked Rhule if he could come back. Rhule said he could. But he and Anderson agreed that Anderson was going to be a wide receiver from then on (he had played both positions in high school). And, the coach added, Anderson wouldn’t get his scholarship back right away.
It worked out for awhile. Anderson had a good 2013 season for a bad, 2-10 Temple team.
But Anderson was soon gone again, this time dismissed from Temple for lack of academic progress. Again, he went home to Florida — missing the entire 2014 season — and kept in touch with Rhule.
Said Anderson: “He (Rhule) stood on the table with the university to get me back into school, to open up that door for me to right my wrongs. ... I wasn’t handling my business in the classroom. I fell short. I was academically suspended. And I wasn’t supposed to be able to come back to school for five years or some ridiculous amount of time … But Coach Rhule fought hard, literally over a full year, and finally they decided to change the university rule. That allowed me to come back over the summer, work hard, raise my GPA, and take a crazy amount of summer classes just to be eligible to play my senior year.”
Rhule wasn’t available for comment about Anderson on Friday, but he told The New York Times in 2016 that he was the one who had to tell Anderson to leave Temple in 2014 for a year because his grades weren’t good enough.
“I think he kind of realized that this can be taken away from you,” Rhule said in that interview. “He had to spend some time on himself.”
Anderson went to community college in Florida during that lost year. Eventually, he returned to Temple as a senior in 2015 and caught 70 passes for 939 yards for a 10-4 Owls team. He was tall (6-foot-3) and fast but also skinny, and he wasn’t drafted.
Anderson made the New York Jets’ as an undrafted free agent, though, by leading the NFL in preseason receiving yardage in 2016. And over four years with the Jets, he turned into a starter and a solid deep threat who averaged 765 yards and five touchdowns per season while gaining 14.8 yards per catch.
It wasn’t all great in those four years. Most notably, Anderson was arrested twice in a nine-month span in 2017-18 in Florida. All the charges were ultimately dismissed except for a misdemeanor reckless driving charge. He pleaded no contest to that charge in Florida and received six months probation, his attorney confirmed to ESPN in 2018. Anderson, 26, said Friday he has “matured in every way possible” since those arrests.
Anderson’s emergence as a viable deep threat meant the Panthers were willing to gamble on him with a two-year, $20-million contract. It is likely that in Rhule’s first season the starting wideouts will be DJ Moore and Anderson, with Curtis Samuel as the third receiver. He already had a relationship with new Panthers quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, so that helps. But he said he had the Panthers in mind as a possible free-agent destination as soon as Rhule got the head-coaching job in January, figuring a reunion would work out well for everyone.
“Winning in his blood,” Anderson said of the coach. “I know that’s what he’s here to do. There wasn’t really much he had to sell me on. ... I wanted to be a Panther.”
This story was originally published April 4, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Forged at Temple, Robby Anderson’s bond with Matt Rhule makes Panthers reunion special."
