Panthers owner David Tepper confronts Charlotte restaurant over sign

Jeremy Vernon

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Panthers owner David Tepper confronts Charlotte restaurant over sign image

The latest chapter of David Tepper's frankly odd tenure as the owner of the Carolina Panthers played out Thursday night about an hour and a half before the start of the NFL Draft.

While making his way to the team's facility in Uptown Charlotte, Tepper and a member of his posse stopped by Dilworth Neighborhood Grille after seeing a sign out front that read "PLEASE LET THE COACH AND GM PICK," a message seemingly directed toward him.

Looking at surveillance footage obtained by WBTV Charlotte, Tepper can be seen walking into the restaurant and talking to a hostess, and eventually someone who seems like the owner of the establishment. During the course of the conversation, he reached out and grabbed the baseball cap the owner was wearing off his head before placing it on the hostess stand.

It didn't appear like the owner minded Tepper doing so, and the two men eventually shook hands before he and his associate left the building. The response on social media has been less kind to Carolina's owner, however.

This latest incident comes just a few months after Tepper was recorded apparently throwing a drink on a group of Jaguars fans during Carolina's 26-0 loss to Jacksonville on New Year's Eve.

Tepper was fined $300,000 by the NFL, but he escaped any other punishment by the league due in part to a lack of precedent. Many thought he should have been suspended.

A week before the start of the NFL Draft, a report on Bill Belichick's attempt to find a new job by ESPN's Don Van Natta, Seth Wickersham and Jeremy Fowler stated that Carolina didn't hire the former Patriots head coach this offseason — instead opting for Dave Canales — because Tepper likes to "sift through data to critique his coach's playcalling," something a source said would be "tough to do" with Belichick on board.

Canales is the third coach Tepper has hired since taking over as the team's owner. He fired Frank Reich in the middle of the 2023 season, and a report by Albert Breer after the season discussed his philosophy in doing so.

“His thing is, the minute it gets bad, it’s going to get worse, so we better try something else,” one former Panthers staffer told Breer. “He’s a hedge fund guy; that’s what hedge fund guys do. The second something stops earning money, they take their money out of it, take the profit and move on to something else.”

Another deep dive into Reich's firing by The Athletic's Diana Russini and Joe Person alleged that some Carolina assistant coaches were "text messaging Tepper behind Reich's back about issues they saw with the team."

Tepper bought the Carolina Panthers in 2018, taking the team from Jerry Richardson — who decided to sell after a Sports Illustrated investigative piece showed he paid monetary settlements to at least four team employees due to inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

Richardson died in 2022, though a 13-foot statue of him still stands outside Bank of America Stadium to this day.

Jeremy Vernon

Jeremy Vernon Photo

Jeremy Vernon is a reporter and editor from Greensboro, North Carolina, with a decade of experience in the industry. His previous stops include MLB.com and two local papers in N.C. — the Monroe Enquirer-Journal and the Chatham News + Record. When he isn’t working, you can likely find Jeremy at the dog park with his two-year old lab mix, Summer.