Dave Canales, one on one: Positivity and a ‘great opportunity’ with Bryce Young in Year 2

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PALM BEACH, Fla. — Sitting underneath a mostly clear sky, next to a marble fountain in the courtyard of The Breakers, Dave Canales was asked how he was doing.

The Carolina Panthers’ second-year coach smiled and raised his hands in a kind of shrug, as if to say: “We’re at a world-class resort, the weather is great and we’re about to talk some football. How bad could it be?”

Canales has an admittedly sunny personality, a stream of positive energy so constant it might lead skeptics to question its authenticity — until you remember the decade-plus he spent working for the eternally upbeat and ageless Pete Carroll in Seattle.

“My natural disposition is how good is this day?” Canales said last week during a break at the NFL’s annual league meeting. “Like, how great is this? We’re sitting here in Palm Beach, Florida.”

Canales’ optimism was challenged during his first season as an NFL head coach. While the Panthers finished on a bit of an upswing, their 5-12 record represented the worst team Canales has been a part of since joining Carroll’s inaugural Seahawks staff in 2010. The Seahawks had winning records in 10 of Canales’ 13 seasons in Seattle, with the low-water mark a 7-10 record in 2021.

Canales served in a variety of roles in Seattle but earned the label of “quarterback whisperer” by reviving the careers of the Seahawks’ Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay, where the Buccaneers went 9-8 and beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a playoff game in 2023 during Canales’ only season as their offensive coordinator.

So yes, Canales concedes it was hard to keep smiling through last year’s 1-7 start, a stretch that coincided with his benching of Bryce Young — his latest QB project — and the October car accident that left veteran Andy Dalton with a sprained thumb and necessitated Young’s return to the lineup in Week 8 at Denver.

While straddling a quarterback situation that could have divided the locker room, Canales never wavered. The consistent approach contributed to Young and the Panthers playing better down the stretch, making Young the clear starter for 2025 and giving fans reason for optimism.

“When things were looking pretty bleak, to be able to keep consistent messaging and not emotionally respond to losses or wins,” Canales said in describing what he learned as a first-year coach. “But just bring it back on Monday (like), ‘All right, here’s the truth. Here’s critical variables. Here’s where we did good. Here’s where we need to improve. We’ve got a plan for this. Are these things that sound like we can fix?’”

Those lessons should benefit Canales in Year 2, when he’ll try to help Young take another step in his development and guide the Panthers to a playoff berth, a goal that eluded the franchise during the first seven years of David Tepper’s ownership.

“He knows who he is,” general manager Dan Morgan said of Canales, who worked with Morgan in Seattle. “He knows where he wants to go, where we want to go, and he stays the course.”

With no prime-time games in 2024, Canales could eat dinner with his family on Sundays when the Panthers played at home. Canales, his wife Lizzy and their four children would go to their favorite neighborhood restaurant for ribs or grab takeout and eat at home.

“I look forward to Sunday evenings,” Canales said. “I typically don’t go right to the film right after the game. I want to have dinner, hang out, spend that time. We’re getting ready for school the next day. Always had the (‘Sunday Night Football’) game on — volume down, but the game was on.”

The Sunday meals provided Canales a brief respite ahead of “tell-the-truth Mondays,” when coaches would offer honest assessments of the previous day’s game before jumping into the film of the next opponent.

Before breaking down the all-22 film, Canales first likes to watch the TV broadcast to familiarize himself with the storylines surrounding the upcoming opponent. It was something Canales learned from Carroll and Carl Smith, a veteran assistant on Carroll’s Seattle staff whose son Tracy is the Panthers’ special teams coordinator.

“You can kind of feel like, ‘OK, this is their fastball. This is what the announcers are saying has shown up really well the last couple of games.’ So it kind of primes me before I get into the all-22,” Canales said. “I just kind of flip through it, skip through the commercials, listen to it. I watch about a half of the game because those stories come out in the first half.”

Canales said the narratives surrounding the Panthers last year were fairly straightforward: A first-year coach trying to establish a culture, a No. 1 pick looking to bounce back from a tough rookie season, and a defense struggling to figure things out.

Beyond those, Canales dealt with the life events that transpire throughout a season for 70 or so players and nearly 20 coaches. At least one player was married (Tommy Tremble), several welcomed newborns (including Austin Corbett, Robert Hunt and Nick Scott) and others lost parents or siblings.

“As a position coach, you’re connected to your players and your staff. You don’t hear about everything. As a coordinator, you hear the offensive stories, a little bit from the other side,” Canales said. “As a head coach, you hear what’s going on with everybody.”

After taking over as starter in Week 8 last season, Bryce Young threw 15 TD passes and six interceptions in his 10 starts for Dave Canales. (Bob Donnan / Imagn Images)

That was the case on the afternoon of Oct. 22 when Canales got a call from former trainer Kevin King, who let the coach know Dalton had been in a two-car accident while taking his kids home from school. Canales immediately called Dalton and asked Lizzy to check in with Dalton’s wife, JJ, who — along with their three children and dog — was also in the vehicle.

With Dalton out with a sprained thumb on his throwing hand, Young returned to the starting lineup and had an uneven performance in a 28-14 loss to the Broncos. Dalton was back practicing the following week, but Canales wanted to give Dalton’s thumb more time to heal and give Young another opportunity.

That began a weekly quarterback question as Canales declined to name Young the full-time starter, even after the Panthers won their next two games against the New Orleans Saints at home and the New York Giants in Germany. Canales initially offered sparing praise of Young as he tried to walk the tightrope of building Young’s confidence while being respectful of Dalton, a 14-year veteran whose 39,500 career passing yards rank seventh among active quarterbacks.

With Young growing more comfortable in Canales’ offense and looking more like the quarterback who won a Heisman Trophy at Alabama, Canales said before the Week 15 game vs. Dallas that Young would remain the starter the rest of the season.

Over the final 10 games, Young completed 61.8 percent of his throws for 2,104 yards, with 15 touchdowns, six interceptions and an 88.9 passer rating. And though they didn’t always result in victories, Young led the Panthers on game-tying or game-winning drives in six of those games.

Still, Canales disagreed when someone suggested Dalton’s injury had been a blessing in disguise.

“I was like, I don’t really want to call the traumatic event of what happened with Andy, JJ and the kids a blessing in disguise. I think it was just an opportunity for Bryce. We were able to see him play and gather a lot more information on him,” Canales said during a one-on-one interview at The Breakers.

“But it was a really challenging situation from that perspective because Andy was so excited to get another opportunity to be a starter at this point in his career. He was so fired up about it. So I wanted to respect and regard that.”

Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid, whose team beat the Panthers 30-27 on a walk-off field goal after Young led a game-tying drive, thought Canales did a good job handling Young.

“The fact that he backed up, let him take a step back and then the kid took a step forward when he came back — that’s great on his part. A tough thing to do,” Reid said last week. “It’s tough to sit him down, especially with him being a first-round pick and all. And then it’s really tough bringing him back. And the kid responded, so it was a great move.”

Carroll, hired in January as the Raiders’ coach at 73, said Canales’ attention to detail and growth during his years in Seattle helped prepare him for being a successful head coach.

“He never fought the process. He was always drawing from the process and became an articulate defender and presenter and proponent of what we were doing. It was obvious,” Carroll said in Palm Beach. “So he goes into that (Panthers) job with a structure and a philosophy and an outlook and a vision for what he wanted to create. And he’s a good enough communicator, he can make sense of it.”

Two of Canales’ peers — Cincinnati’s Zac Taylor and Indianapolis’ Shane Steichen — said the biggest difference in their second year as a head coach was the deeper connection with players. Canales didn’t disagree, although he recalled Carroll telling him that maintaining good relationships is a challenge because people change.

“Xavier Legette’s different. He’s in the building. You see him in passing. Bryce is different. He was there last week, came in for a couple of days to say hi. Their eyes are different. Their world view and perspective are different after going through the experiences of a year. Everyone’s changing,” Canales said.

Morgan, a Panthers’ Pro Bowl linebacker in the early 2000s, had an office two doors down from Canales’ in Seattle and was instrumental in bringing him to Charlotte. Morgan said Canales’ positivity is real.

“He’s like that every day,” Morgan said.

Canales believes viewing each day as a gift helped him and his players withstand the tough times in his first season.

“If you zoom too far in, at times in the season it was like insurmountable — the different, little adjustments and all the things that need to improve,” he said. “But when you zoom out, ‘Man, what a great opportunity. We have these things that we’ve identified over the last day and a half that we can work on again because they keep giving us these games. Regardless of how we did last week, there’s another one coming. It’s the warning but it’s also the gift. We’ve got another one. And it’s gonna take a great day today.’ ”

After wrapping up the interview last Monday, Canales was off to his next appointment at the league meeting. A rain shower would blow through Palm Beach later that afternoon. But it was still sunny as Canales stood and made his way through the courtyard.

(Top photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)

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