Canales' Analysis: Starting QB School, Adding Pieces on Offense + More

Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales met with the media Tuesday afternoon following practice.

Over the past four years, we’ve pulled some of the most interesting quotes from each press conference of the head coach and threw it here in the space, calling it ‘Quick Hits.’

This year, we’re switching things up a little. It will still be the same format, but from now on, we’ll call it ‘Canales’ Analysis,’ for future reference.

Here are some of the notable quotes from today’s presser.

Strong attendence for offseason program

“It’s been encouraging. Just for guys to show up and show excitement about what we’re doing. I think it’s a give and take with the coaching staff as far as making it a good time when they’re here. It’s enrichment, it’s entertaining. Trying to be respectful of their time and maximizing those windows, so it’s not this, ‘oh here we go again with this offseason program,’ we’re trying to give them something to be excited about.”

Helping Bryce Young in his development

“I kind of start at the same place on the first day, every year, on the first day of drills. Today happened to be that day and I was kind of bopping around, Will Harriger, our QB coach had them over there. It tickles me to watch him teach Andy Dalton how to get into a stance to take a ball from under center, but I love it. It’s just like, even Andy, yeah, even you. First things first, let’s get a nice stance, feet underneath your shoulders, stagger the left foot to your in step. Okay, now let’s crouch down and get your shoulders up so you can see both sides of the field. I think there’s something cool about that and I never want to lose that part of it for the guys so that it never becomes boring. Never get bored with the basics. There’s a great Kobe Bryant video if you want to YouTube something later - it’s fantastic. There’s a process. There’s a QB school that he’s going through and as we do it, the things he specifically needs to improve on, that’s the lens that we look at stuff with.”

The first lesson in the QB school

“We always start with the basics. Here’s my stance, here’s the footwork inventory. We have five types of reads - here are those reads, so it’s really just about the basics. Just giving him the language and I think that if we can all get on the same page with the language, again, new offense, new terms - it all starts there. If we communicate and we speak the same language, we can build anything pretty fast.”

Finding more weapons on offense

“My message, our message, has been I want to try to challenge our roster every year. I want to challenge every single spot, so as the draft happens and as we see there’s so much talent at different positions, I don’t think you can ever really afford to say, okay, I think we’re set here. And I think we’re good there, so we don’t need to go with it. I think you just add great players to your team and that’s not just a take the best available philosophy. It’s just, when you have great players and a lot of people are on the same page — let’s challenge our team. It makes everybody better.”