PALM BEACH, Fla. — When 73-year-old Raiders head coach Pete Carroll is asked about the first time he met one of his former assistants, the first thing you notice is the laugh as he notes that it's been a long time.

But Dave Canales made an early impression on his mentor in the NFL, and Carroll remembers that energy to this day. And the way he referred to him by his full given name only underscored the familial vibe between the two.

"David came in as a real energetic," Carroll began when asked about the Panthers head coach at the league meetings at The Breakers resort. "Open, good communicator, athletic, could coach on the field, could move and coach."

That was quite a list to start with, as Canales was starting out on his football journey. Running around and energy have always been a hallmark. But he had to learn how to coach, and build.

The Panthers head coach was working as a coach at El Camino College in the mid-2000s, and his connections throughout the Southern California region made him a valuable recruiting asset for the Southern Cal football staff. He knew the material, and they trusted his opinion.

So Canales would work camps during the summers for Carroll at USC and take any opportunity to run around with kids, from the elementary school-aged to the elite prospects that he got to know from his deep Los Angeles roots.

That connection, initially made through former USC assistant and current Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and developed over the years at Carroll's camps, led to a job in 2009 as the Trojans assistant strength coach and video assistant. Dave Canales just wanted in the door, not knowing it was going to lead him to Seattle a year later when Carroll took the Seahawks job to build a program there.

But with every step, Canales grew and learned and made an even deeper impression on his boss.

"I didn't know him very well at first," Carroll said. "He was a pup, but he grew up in the program. He was really loyal. He was really dedicated to what we were doing and really curious to learn and to study. And right now, he's as close to the mentality that I'm teaching, with (Commanders head coach) Danny Quinn, Sark and Lane (Kiffin, head coach of Ole Miss) and those guys.

"Because he was with us for such a long time that he became the philosophy and the approach, and so he found himself through that, and I watched every step they took this year. I'm really thrilled for the progress they made and the way they kept bouncing back from the challenges of putting together a new program."

Having done that a few times himself, and about to embark on another attempt in Las Vegas, Carroll knows about program-building. So, as he watched the Panthers last year (his son Nate was on the Panthers staff last year), he saw Canales continue to develop in front of his eyes.

And the early decision to bench former No. 1 overall pick Bryce Young, to replace him with Andy Dalton, and go back to Young when he had to showed Carroll that Canales had indeed grown as a coach with the way he navigated a unique situation.

"I mean, he did a masterful job," Carroll said of Canales' handling of his quarterbacks. "That was very difficult. He's given the number one pick in the draft and all the expectations to come along with that. And I think along the way, he made tough decisions one step at a time in those decisions. I thought he maximized the position. Andy did a really good job when he came off the bench and gave him a real spark, and showed why David and his staff were believing in the things they were believing in. They saw success happen. They could feel it. They just got a taste of it, it didn't last as long as they would have liked.

"But then when he came back and got Bryce going, I thought that was an obvious illustration of why he made the decisions that he made. Bryce needed to sit back a bit and learn from Andy, and he was willing to. They went through that whole process, and when Bryce came back, he got better throughout the season and finished strongly. So I would think, I can't speak for them, but I would think that they found out a tremendous amount of information to head into this year with the quarterback position. I don't know where they are and what they're going to do about it, but I think they're in a pretty darn good place right now."

Carroll wasn't the only one praising Canales for the work he did with the position last year. Chiefs coach Andy Reid never had to bench Patrick Mahomes, but he has put together one of the best coach-quarterback tandems in generations, so he knows of which he speaks.

And seeing Young up close during that rebound — the Panthers quarterback was a clean 21-of-35 for 263 yards and a touchdown in a November near-upset of the Chiefs — showed Reid the growth the Panthers were hoping for.

"I thought he did a good job of reading the kid, where he was," Reid said of Canales. "You know his progress, I think they probably accelerated it. 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 brilliant on his part.

"A tough thing to do. That's a tough, tough thing. To sit down a first-round pick, and it's really tough bringing him back. And then the kid responded, so it was a great move."

Both of those coaches are guys Canales has gravitated to throughout his life, Carroll as the early teacher, and Reid as the guy he sought out last year at his first league meeting.

Those are lessons Canales has tried to internalize, tried to adapt as he puts his stamp on his own program in Carolina. And Carroll said that in learning to build one of his own, Canales took all the right steps.

"Dave paid attention to what we were doing throughout," Carroll said. "He grew in our organization, our mentality, our culture, and all of that. He never fought the process; it was always drawing from the process. He became an articulate defender and presenter and owner of what we were doing. It was obvious. So he went into that job with structure and philosophy and outlook and vision for what he wanted to create, and he's a good enough communicator that he could make sense of it. That's what I would be looking for (in a head coach); I'd be looking for somebody that has their act together. This challenge that owners have and clubs have when they have to hire new coaches, it's a very difficult process, it's a very difficult decision to make. There's so much that goes into it to find somebody who can immediately have their act together so that they can be impacting with the way that they approach the game, the people that they deal with, the way they think, the way they operate, the exceptions, the vision, all of that.

"And Dave is equipped with that, and he can communicate it and convey it. I listened to him talk to his team throughout the year and heard him stay on point and stay true. He's given them a chance to have a really solid start."

Carroll was talking about quarterback his Geno Smith Monday morning when he said a thing that sounds very much like Canales. You can hear the influence if you've listened to the young Panthers coach in his year on the job. The message is familiar. The message is learned. The message continues.

"Players, after a while, they learn; yeah, I think that's what living is. I think that's what life is all about," Carroll said. "It doesn't matter where you come from or what you do, as you go through your life, do you experience stuff and then you have pitfalls and suffering, and you have to bounce back and come back and continue to discover and uncover what you're all about. And that's it, that's what life is.

"And so the stuff we're doing, what we're doing, we're just living with them and helping them, but I do feel like you can accelerate the process by helping people go through the steps that they have to take for the self-discovery that's necessary. It's going to happen anyway, but we'd like to think we can coach it along and capture a little bit earlier."

Carroll taught Canales how to take those steps a long time ago in Southern California.

And what he saw his old pupil display last year in Charlotte suggests the lessons were learned.