Too Early Dave Canales Laments”I Would Rather Resign”
The Carolina Panthers’ search for their next head coach is complete.
Dave Canales, formerly the offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Bucs who supervised the emergence of maligned quarterback Baker Mayfield in 2023, was announced Thursday evening as the Panthers’ new head coach.
The 42-year-old play-caller is the seventh head coach in franchise history — not counting interim leaders — and succeeds Frank Reich, who was fired 11 games into his tenure in Carolina after being hired less than a year ago to date.
From his quick rise in the NFL coaching ranks, to his background with quarterbacks and more — here are four things to know about Canales.
The first head coaching hire for Panthers owner David Tepper was Matt Rhule, a successful college coach with big NFL dreams. The second was Reich, the veteran NFL head coach who was in many ways the antithesis to Rhule.
Where does Canales stand in that comparison?
The offensive-minded coach lands somewhere in between them, it appears: This is his first head coaching opportunity, yes, but it comes after a long tenure in the NFL.
After an unheralded college playing career and a year coaching at his high school alma mater in Carson, Calif., Canales made the jump to college coaching in 2006 when he joined El Camino College as the tight ends coach.
There, he built a relationship with Pete Carroll, then the head coach of the University of Southern California, and joined Carroll on the Trojans’ staff in 2009 — before following Carroll to the Seattle Seahawks in 2010.
He spent the next 13 seasons with the Seahawks, where he worked his way up over time from offensive quality control coach to quarterbacks coach.