It seems as though Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales won’t be turning the Carolina Panthers away.
Canales, one of 12 known head-coaching candidates for the Panthers, spoke with reporters ahead of his team’s Wild Card Round matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles. He was asked about Carolina’s interview request.
“Yeah, it is surreal to me,” he replied on Friday, via River Wells of Bucs Wire. “And I’m really grateful, because I honestly can’t do this without the guys in this building—without the talent that we have on our offense, an amazing staff that’s just worked their tail off to put ourselves in the situation to win the division. And so when I think about it, it’s like—okay, coordinator gets all the heat and you get all the praise while there’s really a bigger story than that.”
The 42-year-old has gotten quite a bit of praise for his work over the past two seasons with quarterbacks Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield, both of whom had career years with Canales by their side. Smith passed for a league-high 69.8-percent completion rate with 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2022 while Mayfield hit his own career-high completion mark (64.3 percent) with 4,044 yards and 28 scores in 2023.
Canales also helped the Buccaneers capture their third straight NFC South title this season. Tampa’s offense averaged 313.0 yards and 20.5 points per game.
The Panthers officially announced their interview request with Canales back on Monday. He went on to hint towards his excitement about the upcoming chat.
“So I’m really grateful,” Canales added. “It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a really long time. So I have some stuff prepared, but I really haven’t had time to look at that this week with a formidable in the opponent like the Eagles that are comin’ in here. So it’s gonna require all of us, all of me to be really locked in. And then we’ll play Monday night and we’ll take it from there.
“And at some point, I’ll have a conversation with them and I’ll be really excited and fired up to say the same things that we’ve been talking about here—about building a team that plays championship type of football from the minute you get here.”
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