Fox's Greg Olsen Addresses Panthers HC Rumors: 'I Would Be Crazy' to Not Consider Job

FOX Sports analyst Greg Olsen said he "would be crazy" not to consider a position as the Carolina Panthers head coach if offered an opportunity by the team.

"If they said, 'Hey listen, is this something you'd talk to us about?' To entertain and take that conversation, I think that's fairly obvious," Olsen said Thursday on The Rich Eisen Show.

"How that all plays out, I don't know. I love doing what I'm doing right now... how this future unfolds, a lot of moving parts, a lot of this is out of any of our control."

Olsen's comments come around the 1:20 mark of the video below.

The Athletic's Joseph Person and Richard Deitsch reported Monday that Olsen "would be interested in the Panthers' vacancy if he were approached," although the broadcaster has no coaching experience at the college or NFL levels.

"I think we have to be careful saying that experience leads to competence," Olsen said. "We just have to be careful thinking experience is the only prerequisite to being good at anything."

Olsen spent 14 seasons in the NFL between 2007 and 2020, including nine seasons and three Pro Bowl campaigns with the Panthers.

Olsen also played for the Chicago Bears and Seattle Seahawks, where he played his final NFL season in 2020. In March 2021 he signed a one-day contract in Carolina in order to retire with the Panthers.

He then joined the Fox Sports broadcasting team for the 2021 NFL season.

Olsen is now in his second year as the lead analyst for the network's NFL broadcasts, but that role could be in jeopardy with the arrival of Tom Brady to the network in 2024.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said in 2022 that the seven-time Super Bowl champion would be commentating alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt, the role currently held by Olsen.

That lead role currently pays Olsen $10 million per year, a salary set to drop to $3 million in 2024 as he takes a backseat to Brady, according to Vanity Fair's Tom Kludt.

Olsen is 38, and might not be No. 2 for long. As Person and Deitsch wrote, "it would be a long shot for Brady to stay long-term in broadcasting."

If given the opportunity, however, Olsen said he could be interested in coaching.

"This is not something I'm chasing, this is not something I'm calling around, this is not something I'm actively pursuing," Olsen told Eisen. "I would call the A game at Fox for 30 years if that was what was in the cards.... but I'm just never a believer of just slamming the door on anything that you love, and anything that you're passionate about."

"Whether the opportunity comes or not, I don't know. It's a hypothetical situation... in this hypothetical scenario, why not?"

The Panthers are searching for a permanent replacement for Frank Reich, who was fired Monday after winning just one of his first 11 games as head coach. This marks the second consecutive midseason head coaching change for the Panthers, who last year fired Matt Rule after a 1-4 start to the 2022 season.