CHARLOTTE — Dave Canales will be walking into work this week with a big job on his hands.
Actually, walk might not be the right word. It might even be a bounce or something just short of a sprint. And it will happen before dawn, whatever it is.
But the verb isn't the important part here. It's the noun that matters most. It's time to work on the thing that's most important to him.
"He's all about the work, all about the ball," defensive tackle and franchise foundation piece Derrick Brown said in his matter-of-fact style. "He's even. He doesn't fuss or freak out. Just get the work done.
"That's it. That's it. It's all about the ball with coach Canales."
Of course, energy is an inseparable part of Canales's bio. It's the thing that's easiest to latch onto because it's easiest to see. He is young, and he is unflinchingly upbeat.
Former Bucs (and Panthers) quarterback Baker Mayfield, who had his best season under Canales in Tampa Bay last year, recently referred to him as an "optimist bully." And former Seahawks (and Panthers) left tackle Russell Okung just went out of his way to praise Canales on social media recently, referring to his "relentless positivity."
But after a few months of getting to work with their new head coach (for some of them, their third in the last five years, not counting the interims), Panthers players are also starting to realize that Canales might be something other than just a spark plug, or someone to get people temporarily excited.
There are a lot of new faces and rookies around here; that's the nature of change in the NFL. But the veterans who have been around the block, who have seen coaches come and go and have come and gone themselves, see things a little differently.
Veteran backup quarterback Andy Dalton (who at 36 is nearly a peer of his 43-year-old head coach), admitted he didn't know what to expect when Canales was hired. In the NFL, guys develop reps that stick and are communicated through the grapevine, and Dalton was expecting to meet a Pete Carroll clone (albeit a much younger Carroll) when Canales showed up.
"Seattle was an energetic place, you know, with what Pete was doing there, and then like, OK, how is he going to make that his own?" Dalton said. "How is he going to bring that? Is this, is he going to try to just be what Pete was there? What's the personality going to be like?
"So it's been fun to get to know him. He's taken it, and he's made it his own, and you can see he's obviously an energetic guy to begin with, but how genuine he is with it all, and when you've been around the league 14 years, I mean, you can spot genuine versus not genuine."
Players who have been around the league can spot a poser, because the seasons are long and the work is hard, and character tends to reveal itself when it's put under strain. So, the players who were here watched Canales to see what he was about.
"Well, you can trust somebody who's being genuine, you know what I mean?" Dalton said. "I think everybody can read through when somebody's being a little fake and all that kind of stuff. And I think that that's the thing that everybody wants in this profession, in this business. They just want everybody to be upfront and honest and be true to who you are. And he's shown that from the beginning.
"That's the big thing that once he got here, it's like, OK, he's being himself, it's not just an act of, oh, we are going to be energetic and we're going to run around. That's just who he is."
For the vets who are getting to know Canales, there have been little things over the course of the offseason that spoke to who they were getting in their new head coach.
His first team meeting lasted less than 10 minutes, and then they got to work. Those first impressions are lasting, and new coaches usually use them to talk about themselves or their philosophies. The word culture tends to come up a lot. But Canales said a quick hello, established some expectations, and then sent players to their position meetings to start working in earnest with their new position coaches.
"I think the biggest things are organization, communication, and everybody being on the same page, right?" elder wide receiver Adam Thielen said when asked about the impression Canales has made. "I think it's the aura that he gives off when you're around him, it's just very calm, not a lot of stress.
"Just, hey, we're prepared and we're not stressed about the results. We're stressing about the preparation. And that's the stuff you feel from him in the meeting like, hey, this isn't that hard, it's just football. Go out there and do your job; it's just that kind of calming attitude. And the positive energy that just leaks through the entire organization, right?"
There have been a number of examples that players can point to, but the theme is that Canales is much more worried about getting the work done well than being energetic for the sake of having energy, or appearing energetic. Energy's easy. Anyone can run around and yell. But using that energy to maximize the work product is the important part.
He took a day in June for a NASCAR field day. While turning a few laps at 185 mph might have gotten everyone's adrenaline going, the real point was taking the team to Hendrick Motorsports to see the level of detail it takes to build a champion.
Back to football, there was the day early in OTAs when Canales and his staff began putting in the two-minute offense. He had very particular requirements. One specific teaching point was that when they're in hurry-up mode, he wanted whoever ended up with the ball to run it back to center Austin Corbett, so he could spot it for the ref to keep things moving.
But during one rep in practice this spring, one offensive player casually chunked it back in the general vicinity of the huddle, where running back Chuba Hubbard caught it and quickly handed it to Corbett.
Canales blew the whistle. He calmly explained to the entire team that's not what he wanted to see. Then he had them re-rack the play and do it again. No yelling and screaming. Teaching point, emphasized, next rep.
The ball went back to Corbett for the rest of the period. And there's a larger lesson there.
"I think the biggest thing is, when something goes haywire, it's the NFL, there's going to be a bad series or, in practice, the defense gets us a few times, and you just see his demeanor," Thielen said. "It's just this in-the-moment, next-play attitude, and there's just no stress or anxiety or anger.
"It's just, hey, we'll get them. I'm not proud of what just happened, but I'm not stressed about it. I'm going on to the next play, and I'm making everyone feel that. And that's a good feeling as a player. You are waiting for someone to blow up or someone to stop practice or whatever. But it's just this mentality of next play."
Dalton said that extends to the meeting rooms, where Canales will stick his head in, take part, but mostly lets his coordinators and position coaches do their thing.
"I think one thing that's been cool is he's in the quarterback room and he gives Will (Harriger, the quarterbacks coach) the freedom to run the meeting," Dalton said. "But when Will makes a point, and then Dave goes and emphasizes that point with even more weight, like it is stronger coming from the head coach, and he has such a good way of doing it. It's like, OK, I get you. I get what you're saying, and you make sure the point gets across.
"So I think from that standpoint that he's not trying to do everything, to micromanage at all; he's letting his coaches coach and do their thing. But when there is something that he feels is very important, he's going to say something and he does it in the way that he comes across as OK, that's important and I get it.
"You know exactly where he is. How it comes across is in a way of teaching and wanting you to understand it, rather than this is how we're doing it and I'm the smartest guy in the room. Which, everybody has been a part of that."
That's good news for the Panthers since there's a lot to work on and no time to dwell on the past. They've got an offense to fix, a defense to rebuild, and a whole lot of new to process all at once.
So, energy is important, but not more important than getting the ball right.
So for the vets, the fact that Canales can be upbeat without being obnoxious — energetic without being extra — has been one of the positive developments of the offseason.
Thielen grinned when asked if there were things about Canales that were different than he anticipated, because players talk, and reputations make their way into locker rooms before new coaches do.
"Yeah, he's definitely, definitely a lot calmer than I expected," Thielen said of Canales. "You know, all the things you hear about him, you hear about this big energy guy and all that. And that's not necessarily him. He's more of that calm, cool, collected.
"He's got positive vibes and positive energy, but I wouldn't say he's out there screaming and yelling and pumping up; he's just the same guy, same demeanor, day in and day out."
That is refreshing for players, who are more interested in fixing things than hearing another set of new slogans, or doing things performatively. There's too much to do. So better just to get busy doing.
"I mean, it's a great, refreshing thing to walk into the building to," said Brown, whose action-rather-than-words example has been infectious this offseason. "So we go to practice now, we work, make no mistake about it. We work. The tone has already been set with coach in the house. So he feels like it's up to veteran leadership to be able to keep it there.
"He makes sure everything's right. He's not yelling, dog-cussing people, whatever it happens to be. He says it very matter-of-fact on the practice field. It's just all about the ball."
