New OC Dave Canales Excited About Buccaneers' Offense

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers made the hiring of their new offensive coordinator, Dave Canales, final last week. Canales is coming over from the Seattle Seahawks where he spent 13 seasons under head coach Pete Carroll in a multitude of roles including wide receivers coach, QB's coach, and passing game coordinator.

Canales now gets his opportunity to show the NFL what he has and was extremely excited to get to Tampa Bay and get to work. On Wednesday afternoon, Canales was joined by the Tampa Bay media in his introductory press conference.

"[I’m] really excited to be here, really excited to just bring a new look on what we’re doing. [I’ve] really just been spending the last couple of days shuffling through language, terminology, things like that – just some real basics, you know? One of the things I want to say right off the bat, it was so important to just take my time with this process, to see what we have here. From a football standpoint, they’ve done some great things – a world championship – so I want to respect that and the players that got us to that point, first and foremost. And then there’s just a lot of really awesome people on the staff that I can pull and draw from.”

Report: Promising Quarterback Expected to Start for Buccaneers in 2023

Throughout this week, Canales, head coach, Todd Bowles, and the Buccaneers continued to round out their offensive coaching staff and Canales seems extremely pleased with the staff he has at his disposal heading into the future.

“Ok, great, so let's start up front. First of all, ‘Goodie,’ Harold Goodwin, and Joe Gilbert are here – you talk about world champion offensive line right there. So, I can't wait to get in there, sit with them, and put a run game that's really awesome together and build off of the things that they've been successful with. They've already been so supportive, just wanting to expand with some of the ways that we build formations so it's not these single things that happen. We can move stuff that's going to look really hard for the defense but going to be pretty simple for us. John Van Dam, the tight ends coach, is already here [and] he's got [a] quarterback/O.C. (offensive coordinator) background. So, just having the value of a guy who’s coaching the tight ends with all of that, he really becomes like a bridge, he really becomes the glue. [He] makes me think of our tight ends coach in Seattle, Pat McPherson, who had the same type of background as [the] quarterbacks coach in Denver as well as the tight ends coach. So, he's been kind of the bridge over the years of whatever our run game is. Man, Pat's got these keepers and these play actions that really make it come to life. When I was drawing passes, I would always joke, I'd be like, 'Pat, I've been drawing these plays [for] five years and you haven't brought me a package of it without there being something I haven't drawn' and we're talking about thousands of plays. So that's what I'm going to be expecting from John as well. Then, Skip Peete, we've talked about, [I’m] just fired up to be able to lean on him too just as things get rough at times, somebody who's been around to be able to calm me down as I can get a little bit excited and I've got a lot of bottled-up energy and a bunch of ideas but that will be really helpful. Then Brad Idzik, five years at Stanford as an assistant and then four years in Seattle, quarterbacks and receivers. The thing that I’ll say about Brad, there's two reasons, really, why I had to have Brad – number one, you look outside after any practice, he's out there with somebody working, or two or three guys. He was always that safety net just kind of catching guys. If you had 12 guys in a receiver room, he's working with the bottom half. If we brought a free agent in who needed help transitioning into a new system, Brad's right there early, [then] afterwards, 'Here's the plan, here's how we package these things, here's how to block this guy right there.’ That's going to be really important with Mike [Evans] and with Chris [Godwin]. For him to be the bridge for those guys and to this new system. That's going to be a really important task of Brad's. He was mentored by Sanjay Lal in the receiver room, some of you might not know him, [but] he's regarded as one of the best receiver coaches out there. He trained Brad and so Brad's going to be able to employ some of those study film, different techniques and all that he'll bring. Probably most importantly he's my workout partner, so he's 10 years younger than me and he can go. So like I'm chasing him up and down the gym and it keeps me alive so we've spent a lot of good times and a lot of good hours together.”

Speaking of offensive personnel on the field, Canales spoke highly about the weapons he will have at his disposal including the likes of Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and Rachaad White, and what type of roles they will play within his offensive scheme.

On the wide receivers,

"I would say, specifically, they just do so many good things outside the numbers with the one-on-one matchups. That will definitely be a part of what we do. And then, moving the receivers to gain access – you can release easier if you move your receivers around, so we have a simple system that allows us to be able to do that, to give them access into the secondary. And when you get a big sucker like those guys with a free run, where they're not having to face press all the time – and they're both magnificent versus press, that's the cool part. Anytime you reduce football to just being mano-y-mano ball, it's just not smart football. So, anything you can do to get a matchup, an advantageous matchup or to move a gain to gain access, we'll do those things. And we definitely use our receivers in the run game, so having two big guys who can do that is awesome. And actually Russell [Gage Jr.] is fantastic in there, too. He's really tough. So that's another guy we'll be able to use."

On what he saw from Rachaad White in the Bucs game vs. the Seahawks in Germany last year.

"Oh yeah, what shocked me about that was the toughness in the style that he ran because I saw him as this versatile guy who you could run routes with him out of the backfield, split him out wide and do some things like that, plus the run game. But then you see his attitude in person in Germany, just see the style that he ran downhill, he was aggressive, the violence that he played with and you go, 'Wow, this guy could be special.' He's got some great skillset that really fits into our system."

Canales doesn't have play-calling experience at the collegiate or NFL level but plans to have a balanced offensive attack. He also spoke on what type of offensive system he will run, how it will be installed, and what it will look like.

“It’s good I just came fresh off of interviews and stuff so I can just rattle this stuff off. Number one, it’s all about the ball. Everything we do with all 11 guys on the offense, it’s going to be about protecting the football. Whether it’s in the run game, pass game or protection, we are going to be crazy about it. One thing that hits my brain really quick… Skip Peete is going to be our running backs coach – they had zero fumbles lost last year from the running back. He could have started that interview with that, dropped the mic and he would’ve been hired. That’s number one. Number two is focusing on what we control – that is your fundamentals and your attitude. We’re going to be a developmentally-minded staff that’s looking to develop ‘Player A’ to ‘Player Z.’ They are ours until they’re not. There is no catering to this guy or that guy. We want everybody to develop their fundamental skills. Then the attitude – it starts with effort. I go back to Pete [Carroll], from day one – the very first day of spring and the very first day of camp, we critique effort first. We’re looking for people trying really hard. We will get the how to, but we’ve got to get the how much and how fast going before we can really take a step from there. The third thing is the marriage between the run and pass. That is our identity – things that start looking one way, but end up being different. The thing that is going to help us, without getting into too much detail, is that we’re going to do things that are simple in concept but are complex in delivery. What do I mean by that? It’s not going to be a lot of plays. It’s going to be a few plays out of different personnels and different looks so that our execution stays at a high level there. Then we’re going to be situationally aware. We are going to be a very smart football team. We're going to know what we are looking at and the situations. The play calls are going to come out based on the specific area of the field. The players are going to be aware of, ‘When we get this situation, we should probably only be calling this one or two plays.’ They will be in tune with a lot of that stuff, and then of course ready to adjust. The thing that allows you to adjust is not having so much volume. When you keep the package tight then you’re able to adjust and make little fine-tuning changes within a gameplan so that they can continue to play fast. And the last part that will be our calling card is finish. You’ll see linemen running down the field. You’ll see Geno [Smith] last year chasing Ken Walker down on runs just trying to get his body in the way, in a smart way to keep himself safe. You’re going to see 11 people fly off the ball and really finish – finish drives, finish quarters, finish halves and finish games. It starts in practice. That’s the general philosophy of what we will do.”

Canales also addressed probably the biggest elephant in the room on Wednesday regarding what the plans are at the quarterback position after the retirement of Tom Brady, specifically about Kyle Trask - currently the only quarterback on the Buccaneers' roster.

"Good question. The way that I’ve been trained is, ‘They’re ours until they’re not.’ So, right now, I’ve got one Buccaneers quarterback – it’s Kyle Trask. I can talk about Kyle for a second here. I really liked him coming out [of college]. If you look at some of the skill position players that he had there: Kyle Pitts, Kadarius Toney – he had the big return in the Super Bowl – and then you have Dameon Pierce [who] was another guy, right? Well, he was able to distribute. The thing that we’re going to help Kyle continue to build on here is to just be a point guard. Point guards don’t have to be the one to score all the points – you just distribute. Play on time, get the ball out of your hands, life is better that way when you do that. You’ve got these bears chasing you and if you don’t like bears chasing you, get rid of the ham – and that’s the football, right? So just teaching him those principles, allowing him to be a distributor. The other part, too, about quarterback philosophy and play – coming from a junior college background and high school and all that, we really didn’t care if the guy was 5’10” or 6’4”. I had a 6’6” quarterback – the one thing we were looking for is can this guy play catch? ‘Schotty’ [Brian Schottenheimer] called it the ‘me-to-you factor.’ I loved that – it’s just me to this guy. Learning who my skill players are and being able to distribute – he’s already shown he can do that. On top of that, it’s just a really quarterback friendly system because of the balance of the run and the pass. We’re not going to put him in harm’s way a lot, until of course you get into those situations where you’ve got to throw it a little bit – and then we’ll do that as smart of a way as possible.”

"Yeah, so with Kyle. the QB run stuff, QB read stuff won't be a big feature of what we do. But as far as everything else that we do in terms of the play-actions and the keeper game, he's plenty athletic enough. He's got short-space quickness. If you guys remember, his Florida tape, the protection wasn't always great. And he just had a really gritty, savvy way of moving in tight spaces to get the ball gone to his players. So, he's got plenty of athleticism to run our system. Jared Goff, right, was in the system. Aaron Rodgers. Russell last year. When Russell was not the young Russ, who was the runner in all that stuff. There's really no concern for me there with Kyle."

"I would say, really right now, the system is the system. It handles any real type of quarterback. So, it's not so much that we're going to building it through Kyle, it's just that as I get to know him and study him, the things we'll do will be in his wheelhouse. And it's going to be about our tight ends, it's going to be about our backs. It's going to be about Mike [Evans] and Chris [Godwin], Russell [Gage]. It's really the whole thing. When I say system, it's not so much the plays that are run but it's the marriage of the run and pass and it's the attacking style that we're going to be in and out of tempos and multiple. So that part, really, you plug and play your talent. The plays become the plays but it's the system that is flexible."

It goes without saying that Canales will have his hands full as he has never been in a position such as this in his career. He will have to earn the respect of some veteran players on the offensive side of the ball and be able to put them all in positions to be successful. Not only that, but he will have the tough task of figuring out what quarterback he will want to start and roll with throughout the season - although at this point it seems highly likely that he intends to roll with Kyle Trask.

Yes, his hands are full, but it appears that Canales is coming in with the right mindset and confidence to be able to get the job done. Having fresh faces on the offensive staff should provide a jolt to an offense that struggled throughout the season last year. With the offseason still ahead the personnel on the field may change, but either way, Canales plans to utilize his guys to their fullest capabilities come the 2023-24 NFL season.

Stick with BucsGameday for more coverage of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers throughout the 2023 offseason.

Follow BucsGameday on Twitter and Facebook