The new commander and chief of the Carolina Panthers will not even have to vacate the NFC South to begin this new chapter of his career.
The Panthers are expected to hire Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales as its new head coach, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported on Thursday.
“It will get done,” a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Thursday also.
The fine print and other intricacies of Canales’ contract have not been worked out yet, a league source told ESPN.
The Panthers are hoping that Canales, 42, can work his magic for signal caller Bryce Young, the same way he pulled it off for quarterbacks Russell Wilson, Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield.
Canales took his second interview with the Panthers on Wednesday in Charlotte, where he met with the brass, team owner David Tepper, new general manager Dan Morgan and others on the search committee.
Morgan is very familiar with Canales after spending eight years together on the Seattle Seahawks’ staff from 2010 to 2017 when Canales was the wide receivers coach for the Seahawks. A relationship with Morgan and being a disciple of former Seattle head coach Pete Carroll was one of the deciding factors.
Canales started with Carroll on the collegiate level as USC’s strength and conditioning coach in 2009 and followed him to Seattle.
Canales was the passing game coordinator for the Seahawks in 2020 when Wilson set career marks with 40 touchdowns and a 68.8 completion percentage and also passed for 4,212 yards.
He was the quarterbacks coach for Seattle in 2022 when Smith threw for a career-high 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns with a 69.8 completion percentage.
He was the offensive coordinator at Tampa Bay this past season when Mayfield, who spent the previous season with the Panthers and the Rams, had a career-high 4,044 yards, 28 touchdowns and 64.3 completion percentage.
Embed from Getty ImagesCanales’ move from Tampa, Florida, to Charlotte, North Carolina punctuates a fast track for him in just a calendar year, a 12-month period of time in which he jumped from Seahawks quarterbacks coach to Buccaneers offensive coordinator, and now, to head coach of a Panthers team in desperate need of direction and an identity.
The hiring makes plenty of common sense for a franchise seeking a steady, calming influence for Young. The former No. 1 overall pick out of the University of Alabama, did not progress in the manner expected in his first season, which ended up being a nightmarish campaign in which Carolina fired Young’s coach, Frank Reich, midway through his first year, on November 27.
As Young struggled to find his sea legs, Canales showed off what he could do as a quarterback guru, with the task of refining Mayfield’s game in 2023, leading the signal caller to the best season of his 6-year career, a wild-card win versus the Philadelphia Eagles and an appearance in the Divisional Round of the NFC playoffs, where they lost to the Detroit Lions 31-23 on Sunday.
Carolina has the expectations that Canales can do the same with Young, a quarterback for whom the Panthers gave up an abundance of capital and watched him finish last in passing yards per attempt and passer rating as a rookie.
Canales brings 14 seasons of NFL coaching experience to Charlotte, where he will oversee an entire team for the first time in his career. He has a championship-level resume, helping Seattle win Super Bowl XLVIII as assistant quarterbacks coach for former Seahawks star signal caller Wilson, but will be under a much larger microscope as Panthers owner David Tepper’s latest choice to lead his struggling franchise.
