Scott Fitterer's name has been attached to some wild swings over the last few years, and now it's attached to a genuinely surprising career pivot. The former Panthers GM is leaving the Commanders front office to join Athletes First, the mega-agency that represents coaches and executives, not just players looking for their next contract.
For a guy who's spent nearly 3 decades on the scouting and personnel side, this is a real lane change. Fitterer started as an area scout with the Giants back in 1998, climbed the ladder in Seattle for almost 2 decades, and eventually got his own team to run when Carolina hired him as GM in 2021.
That Panthers chapter is the part of his resume everyone remembers, and not for good reasons. Fitterer's 3 seasons in Carolina produced a 14-37 record, capped by the disastrous decision to trade up to the #1 pick for Bryce Young, who went 2-14 as a rookie. The Panthers fired Fitterer in January 2024 after a 2-15 season, and he landed in Washington that summer as a personnel executive under GM Adam Peters.
2 seasons in Washington later, Fitterer's out again, but this time it's his call and it's not another firing. Athletes First isn't a scouting department, it's an agency, meaning Fitterer will now be advising coaches and executives on their own career moves and negotiations instead of building a 53-man roster himself. It's the kind of exit that reads less like a demotion and more like someone deciding he's done sweating draft boards.
The Commanders wasted no time filling the hole, bringing in Demetrius Washington as a senior personnel executive to take over Fitterer's responsibilities. For a front office that's trying to build off real momentum under Peters and Dan Quinn, a quiet swap like this barely moves the needle on the field. But for Fitterer personally, it closes the book on a GM tenure defined by the Bryce Young gamble and opens up a totally different chapter representing the people who used to be his peers across the table.