Canales' Analysis: Early Thoughts on Bryce Young, Barno's Injury + Motivation

Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales met with the media following the team's first practice of OTAs.

Bryce Young picking up the playbook

"He's doing fantastic with it and the way we do it is part to whole, really. So, as we teach our concepts...just for an example, let's say we have a pass concept, we're not going to use six different formations today to run this concept. If it becomes something that we're really effective at, we'll start to build it out. So for us, the formations are pretty vanilla so that we can just teach the concept and what we want out of each route, the depth, the footwork. That's the approach right now, so as I expect him to do, he's really mastering that part of it."

Young working on getting the ball out quicker

"I think today's a really good starting point for getting that. Because really what's going to allow Bryce to learn the timing as he grows is having the defense out there to kind of see that these windows close quickly. If number one in progression is going to be off pre-snap, how quickly can I get to two and three? Those are all the things that I can't wait to just can't wait to get into the meeting room, study what we did today, build off of that and just kind of stack those days. This is really the time we're starting to evaluate that."

Amaré Barno's injury

"He had a pretty good ACL injury. He's progressing great. He's on the field doing some straightline running stuff today. He's been here every day working with our athletic training staff just to build the strength around it, his flexibility. The reports we're getting are great, so he's trending in the right direction. I don't have a specific date, but he is out there working and he's got his cleats on doing stuff, so I'm looking forward to getting him back up to speed so we can get him back in a practice at some point."

Not having any primetime games

"You got to earn it. You got to earn primetime games. Those things just don't come along. They don't start out that way, they don't just throw you on primetime games for no reason. We have to build a version of football that we're proud of and be able to accentuate that talents and strengths of the guys that we have and then I think the world will want to see that at some point. But we got a long way to go and we got to earn those types of opps."

If no primetime games can be used as a motivator

"I'm not a negative motivator. I'm about possibilities. I'm about how good we can become. I think some guys would be naturally motivated that way if they do (great), that's just never really worked for me. I don't know who the teams are, I look at the schedule, and I can't tell you whether I'm excited about it or not. I'm excited, it just makes it more real for me now that it's on paper. This season is going to happen whether we like it or not, here it comes. My expectation for our group is that we take it one week at a time and we just get better the following week by working hard and by working together."

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