From player to GM: Panthers' Dan Morgan, 49ers' John Lynch are in rare air

Carolina Panthers general manager Dan Morgan made approximately $35 million from 2001 to 2009 as a Panthers linebacker. He received a $5 million signing bonus when he inked a five-year, $28 million extension with Carolina at the peak of his career in 2005.

So when the Seattle Seahawks offered him a yearly salary of about $35,000 to be a scout in 2010, it was a reality check. But it was Morgan’s goal to become an NFL general manager, and he knew the best way to do it at the time was to start at the bottom as most before him had.

Morgan said not many former players are willing to do that, and that’s one reason only two of 32 NFL general managers played in the league — Morgan and the San Francisco 49ers‘ John Lynch.

There are six GMs in the 30-team NBA with pro playing experience, six among MLB’s 30 and 15 of 32 in the NHL, according to ESPN Research.

There have been others in the NFL, including Super Bowl-winning Ozzie Newsome of the Baltimore Ravens, but the pipeline is hardly robust. In 2015, the NFL established the Nunn-Wooten Scouting Fellowship, which opens the door for former players interested in scouting, but there is no formal pipeline to become a general manager.

An unwillingness to grind at lower levels might be one reason so few have become GMs, but others believe players might be ready to pursue other avenues after dedicating most of their lives to football. Other former players might opt for television jobs, as Lynch did.

Morgan’s Panthers (6-5) and Lynch’s 49ers (7-4) meet Monday night at Levi’s Stadium (8:15 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN).

“A lot of guys, when they get done playing, they want to spend time with their families [instead of pursuing a front-office job] because it’s a huge commitment,” Morgan told ESPN in the midst of his second year as Carolina’s GM. “And usually you do have to start from the bottom, and they’re not willing to do that.

“John Lynch is a bit of an anomaly in that he came right out of the [broadcast] booth. But most of the time you have to work your way up, kind of learn the ropes, before being in a position like this.”

With that comes paychecks that are a fraction of what they earned as players, and longer hours. The offseason is even busier for them because of scouting and preparation for the draft.

“You’ve got to be willing to do the grunt work,” said Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane, a former Carolina intern who helped evaluate Morgan when the Panthers made him the 11th pick of the 2001 draft and then hired him as his director of player personnel in 2018.

“Dan was willing to do that.”

---

BESIDES MORGAN AND Lynch, other former NFL players who became GMs include Newsome, a Hall of Fame tight end (GM of the Ravens, 2002-2018); cornerback Martin Mayhew (Commanders, 2021-23); linebacker John Dorsey (Chiefs, 2013-17; Browns, 2017-19); Hall of Fame QB John Elway (Broncos, 2011-20); and running back Ran Carthon (Titans, 2023-24).

“A guy like Ozzie inspired me,” Mayhew said. “John Lynch and Dan Morgan are going to inspire other players. You’re going to see other players that see them and are like, ‘Man, that’s something I want to do.”’

Lynch hopes more players will follow in his footsteps.

“For a while there was maybe a bias against former players,” Lynch said. “[It was,] ‘No, they don’t want to do the work.’ … That’s ludicrous. There’s a reason that these people have been successful in a job that’s really, really tough to be successful in.

“You have to not only be talented, but you have to be an incredible worker and persevere and overcome odds.”

Newsome understands. He guided the Ravens to Super Bowl wins at the end of the 2000 and 2012 seasons. He began his quest to become a GM in 1991 as an assignment scout for the Cleveland Browns under coach Bill Belichick.

“First, a lot of the players want to become entrepreneurs when they retire or leave the game,” Newsome said. “They’ve started their own business, and they want to continue with business.

“A lot of them are just fed up with football. They’ve been playing it since they were 4- or 5-years old. When your career comes to an end, you just say it’s time to move on to something else.”

Morgan embraced the grunt work to stay involved in football, viewing the learning process for becoming a GM much like studying tape when he was a player.

“As a former player, you can’t just plop into the seat,” he said, noting that today’s game requires knowledge of the salary cap and analytics on top of player evaluation. “There’s so many moving parts throughout the day.”

Beane isn’t surprised Morgan took that approach.

“If there was a fast-track way to do it, more would,” he said. “There’s just not in the NFL. … That’s the thing I always admired about Dan. He moved his family out to Seattle and started at a low-paying level and put the hours in.

“You saw him from afar doing it. That’s kind of what attracted me to hire him. Knowing his love for ball and the work ethic he showed in Seattle.”

---

LYNCH COULD HAVE been in Morgan’s seat with the Panthers had David Tepper not won the bid to purchase the team in 2018.

Lynch had talked to Ben Navarro, founder and CEO of Sherman Financial Group, who was a finalist to buy the team from Carolina’s founding owner Jerry Richardson. Lynch and Navarro’s brother, P.T., had become close at Fox Sports where P.T. worked as a producer. He told Lynch there was interest in hiring him if Ben got the team.

“I was doing a game in Atlanta, and he flew down, met me,” Lynch recalled. “I kind of prepared for it and said, ‘Here’s what my thoughts would be on how you build a championship organization.’

“And so that was kind of my first entry to, ‘OK, this possibly could be a reality.”’

Lynch ultimately made a cold call to Kyle Shanahan in January 2017 to offer his congratulations on getting the 49ers’ head coaching job and pitch the idea of the two working together. That led to a meeting with Shanahan and San Francisco owner Jed York. Both were impressed enough to make an offer.

Lynch, who had spent eight years as an analyst for Fox Sports after a Hall of Fame career as a safety, accepted.

The move caught many in the business off guard because the nine-time Pro Bowler for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Denver Broncos didn’t have any experience as a scout or in NFL personnel.

“I was a little naive,” Lynch said. “I didn’t really understand what college scouts, what went into their life and their journey and how much they pour into it.”

But Lynch successfully applied his experience as an analyst and player to his new role. He helped turn an organization that won two games in 2016, six in 2017 and four in 2018 into a team that won 13 games in 2019 and reached Super Bowl LIV, losing to the Kansas City Chiefs.

He did so well that in 2022, shortly after taking San Francisco back to the NFC title game, Amazon reportedly offered him three times his estimated $5 million salary with the 49ers to return to the broadcast booth for “Thursday Night Football.”

Lynch turned down the offer to chase his dream of winning a championship as a GM, like he did as a player with the Bucs in Super Bowl XXXVII.

He credits the success he has had in management to what made him a successful player: work ethic.

Morgan calls it “low egos.”

“Guys that are just curious, that are always willing to learn, always looking to get better,” he said. “They’re hard workers and they don’t have all the answers.”

---

WHEN MORGAN WAS a rookie in 2001, the Panthers went 1-15. By his third season, they reached the Super Bowl. Carolina finished his first season as GM at 5-12 and, heading into Monday’s game, is tied at 6-5 with the Buccaneers atop the NFC South.

Morgan believes his playing experience gave him “instant credibility” with players.

“Just being able to lead people, direct people, give them direction, that’s a part of it,” Morgan said. “And having a player’s perspective, like the mindset of what you need to be successful in the league, just kind of knowing what they’re going through on a daily basis and being able to identify that.

“That gives me an advantage in that sense.”

Lynch said he is “very targeted” in the type of player and personality he wants to build around.

“You truly know what to look for when you’ve been there,” Lynch said. “That’s really important.”

Morgan learned from general manager John Scheider and head coach Pete Carroll in Seattle, but he leaned on his experience as a player in 2012 when he recommended the Seahawks draft linebacker Bobby Wagner in the second round.

“Me being a former player, I maybe saw something in him that maybe others didn’t,” Morgan said of Wagner, who became a 10-time Pro Bowl selection. “And he turned out obviously to be really good.”

Morgan used the same logic this year when drafting a pair of edge rushers, Nic Scourton in Round 2 and Princely Umanmielen in Round 3. They have helped turn Carolina’s defense from worst in the NFL to the middle of the pack.

“As a player, he was just a baller,” Beane said. “He just wanted to show up and lead the defense and hit somebody in the mouth.”

Beane recalled that Morgan once tore his biceps while training during his playing career and didn’t tell anybody.

“His arm was all black and blue,” he said. “He didn’t want to be taken out, so he wore long sleeves for the rest of camp to try and mask it. He knew if the trainers saw it that would end his season.

“You get some guys that are looking for the limelight, like how do I get this interview? Dan never cared about that stuff. Dan just wanted his work to speak for itself.”

---

MORGAN AND LYNCH want to build championship rosters, but they also understand there will be rough moments, such as the Panthers’ 17-7 loss to a one-win New Orleans team two weeks ago.

“Dan is an incredible resource, especially because he’s been a captain,” Panthers coach Dave Canales said. “He’s been a leader and in the middle of this. So when he sees things, when he reflects and I sit down and talk to him, I can always pick that part of his brain to say, ‘What does this feel like to you being on the really good teams that you’ve been on?’

“Or dealing with injuries, dealing with off-the-field issues, he’s lived a lot of these things. And he has a really positive approach about finding solutions to things versus trying to find excuses for why things happened.”

Parlaying that knowledge into a front office career is what Morgan and other players visualized when they decided the low pay and long hours were worth it to be a part of big moments like Monday night’s game.

Morgan talks about helping the Seahawks win the Super Bowl after the 2013 season as the assistant director of pro personnel with as much pride as he talks about having a Super Bowl-record 18 tackles for the Panthers in 2003.

“I was just hooked, seeing a vision come alive,” Morgan said. “That was the cool part about me being out there, what made me hungry to sit in this seat eventually.”

ESPN 49ers reporter Nick Wagoner contributed to this story.