Greg Auman
NFC South Reporter
New Panthers coach Dave Canales spent 13 years as a Seahawks assistant working beneath Pete Carroll, and with a employees full of comparable transplants from the Pacific Northwest, it is simple to forged Carolina as Seattle South.
These Seahawks groups made the playoffs 10 occasions, gained 5 division titles and made the Tremendous Bowl twice, profitable a championship and almost one other. Discovering something near that success in Charlotte could be outstanding, particularly with Canales taking on a workforce that had the worst file within the NFL final 12 months at 2-15.
Carroll, now 72 and 30 years faraway from his first season as an NFL head coach, stated the 43-year-old Canales has set himself up for achievement.
“He is manner higher ready as a younger head coach than I used to be,” Carroll stated by telephone final week. “I used to be completely unprepared. It took me some time — I needed to get kicked round sufficient earlier than I acquired going. He is acquired a significantly better runway to beginning this. He is well-versed, he is aware of what is going on on, he is very articulate.
“A lot of it’s how nicely you’ll be able to convey the message, and he is a extremely good communicator. I am completely jacked about watching him, as a result of he is able to go.”
In Carroll’s first season as an NFL coach, he went 6-10 with the Jets and acquired fired. His second stint, because the Patriots’ head coach, featured a division title and profitable file, however he was nonetheless fired after three years. The NFL is just not a affected person place, and his success in Seattle got here solely after 9 years (and two nationwide titles) at USC.
In his ultimate season with the Trojans, Carroll employed Canales as a power coach and video assistant. The 2 had met when Canales, then teaching at a neighborhood faculty in Southern California, labored part-time at Carroll’s soccer camps. When Carroll left for Seattle in 2010, Canales went, too. He rose via the ranks from offensive high quality management coach to assistant quarterbacks coach to large receivers coach to QB coach to move recreation coordinator.
Carroll stated no Seahawks assistant understood the system higher than Canales.
“He has the background, the understanding, the philosophy and the ideas, all of that,” Carroll stated. “He will get to make use of no matter he needs to. We did loads of profitable, loads of good issues, had our hardships, so he is had a extremely well-rounded expertise.”
It has been a outstanding 16 months for Canales, who grew to become an offensive coordinator and playcaller for the primary time final 12 months with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, teaching Baker Mayfield in a bounce-back season that gave the Bucs their third straight division title. One big leap led to a different, and in late January, Canales was chosen by Carolina to take over a workforce that has had six straight dropping seasons and has burned via six coaches (counting interims) since 2019.
Now, together with his first likelihood to make a whole workforce his personal, he’ll take inspiration from the coach who introduced him to the NFL. There’s loads of Carroll in Canales, particularly in his excessive degree of vitality and relentless positivity.
“He taught me a very long time in the past: ‘Do not attempt to do what I do, simply search what I am searching for, the bigger-picture issues that matter to me, after which make it your personal,'” Canales stated. “That is at all times been his problem.”
Canales’ baseline optimism, his pure default buoyancy, ought to serve him nicely in Carolina, even when it is prone to be examined this fall. The Bucs hit a midseason rut final 12 months once they misplaced six of seven video games, scoring 20 factors or fewer in six of these video games. However Canales stayed centered and helped the workforce win 5 of its final six video games and declare the division title.
“I do not assume there’s any doubt that is going to assist, as a result of there’s going to be some hardships alongside the best way, figuring it out,” Carroll stated. “Anyone’s going to have to carry the imaginative and prescient of the longer term, and he’ll. He’ll be actually constructive and forward-thinking. He will not let issues knock him astray. He’ll be actually resilient. He’ll present them what they will develop into and stick with it.”
Canales is simply a part of the Seattle presence in Carolina. New common supervisor Dan Morgan spent eight years in scouting and the entrance workplace with the Seahawks. Among the many new teaching employees, offensive coordinator Brad Idzik, special-teams coordinator Tracy Smith, quarterbacks coach Will Harriger, tight ends coach Pat McPherson and Carroll’s son, Nate, now Carolina’s passing recreation coordinator, have been all with Canales in Seattle.
Smith’s father, Carl “Tater” Smith, spent 10 years with Canales on the Seattle employees, and subsequent to Carroll, he may need been most influential in molding him into the coach he’s now.
“I might credit score Tater for actually giving me my soccer training, by way of situational soccer, win a recreation, prepare a quarterback, discuss to the quarterback and train him to be a pacesetter,” Canales stated. “He simply has a methodical manner of dissecting vital variables. How lengthy does an incompletion take? 5 seconds. What may you anticipate on this state of affairs?
“And as an offensive coordinator, simply name the subsequent play, belief what you got here up with within the solitude of your workplace with a cup of espresso with no one yelling and no stress. You believed that was an awesome play, so simply name it. All these little classes. I may go on. There are a number of occasions a day I consider him and phrases of knowledge he was in a position to give me.”
Smith, 76, visited the Panthers throughout their rookie minicamp to meet up with previous colleagues and watch the brand new head coach construct relationships together with his gamers. He stated Canales is an instinctive playcaller who reminds him of a coach he shared a sales space with as Browns assistants from 2001-03. Again then, Todd Bowles was barely 40 and Cleveland’s nickel bundle coach.
“Todd was having to simply sit again and wait, as a result of anyone else was making the calls,” Smith stated. “I keep in mind a few occasions when the coordinator would ask Todd within the field, and only a barrage of ideas got here immediately. He’d been holding again the entire recreation, and that was the primary time I knew that Todd, OK, this man can do it. He will go to the subsequent step. Equally, with Dave, no one is aware of what it’ll be like your first time as a coordinator, however I felt assured he was going to do it.”
Smith cited what he calls “emotional management” in Canales, a capability to stay calm when every part round him is just not, a levelheadedness that may be arduous to seek out within the career.
“He has management, and that is a present. He’ll retain that as a head coach,” Smith stated. “Some coaches are profitable with out it. Bruce [Arians] did not at all times have it, as a matter of reality. Dave, as a coach, he is accomplished his work and he is decisive. He was like that within the field. He was unflappable, economical. It did not shock me he did nicely as a playcaller.”
A lot of Canales’ fast future, and of Carolina’s success and failure, will hinge on the progress of quarterback Bryce Younger, the highest decide within the 2023 draft. The Panthers traded a considerable bundle to maneuver up for Younger, together with what turned out to be this 12 months’s No. 1 general decide, and Younger had an underwhelming rookie 12 months, throwing for 11 touchdowns towards 10 interceptions.
The widespread thread in Canales’ previous two seasons is getting high-round quarterbacks who’d fallen on arduous occasions again to their primes. In Seattle, he helped Geno Smith develop into a Professional Bowler after he had began simply 5 video games within the earlier six seasons. In Tampa, he bonded shortly with Mayfield, who had been with three groups the earlier 12 months however bounced again with a Professional Bowl season regardless of the daunting problem of taking on a workforce from Tom Brady.
Carolina has additionally labored to improve the expertise round Younger this offseason, spending $153 million on a pair of free-agent guards in Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis, buying and selling for Steelers receiver Diontae Johnson and utilizing three of its prime 4 picks on skill-position gamers in receiver Xavier Legette, working again Jonathon Brooks and tight finish Ja’Tavion Sanders. On protection, in the meantime, the Panthers misplaced a few of their largest stars and are rebuilding that facet of the ball beneath returning coordinator Ejiro Evero.
Canales is happy to have his personal workforce again collectively. Since his rent, his spouse Lizzy had stayed in Tampa with their 4 youngsters, permitting them to complete the college 12 months earlier than transferring, with Dave making common journeys house. With the college 12 months completed, the household drove to Charlotte this previous weekend, fortunately reunited after a second relocation in as many springs.
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In his new workplace, Canales has a photograph of himself standing in the long run zone, speaking to a gaggle of gamers in gentle blue and black uniforms. It isn’t his Panthers, however a shot from 20 years in the past, when he was the freshman soccer coach at Carson Excessive in California, the place he graduated. The scoreboard reveals a 12-0 win, and he nonetheless remembers the opponent that day — Taft Excessive. As a lot as issues have modified for him, Canales appears to be like at that second as a reminder of how a lot they will keep the identical. That was the final time he was a head coach, and after two huge leaps in a single 12 months, he is now doing it on the sport’s highest degree.
“I do not assume I ever dreamed that it will have occurred this quick,” he stated. “The best half for me is to always remember the eagerness that I began this career with. By no means let it go. I by no means need to lose that.”
Greg Auman is FOX Sports activities’ NFC South reporter, overlaying the Buccaneers, Falcons, Panthers and Saints. He’s in his tenth season overlaying the Bucs and the NFL full-time, having hung out on the Tampa Bay Instances and The Athletic. You may observe him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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