Fans of the Carolina Panthers are rather expert at spotting a head coach who isn’t going to last. Team owner David Tepper may have a reputation for an itchy trigger finger when it comes to his head coaches,
but he has yet to fire somebody who the fanbase hadn’t already soured on. Ron Rivera, Matt Rhule, and Frank Reich had each more than worn out their welcome in Charlotte before Tepper made his decisions. Current head coach Dave Canales is not there yet. He has shown flashes of promise and maintained his infectious optimism despite his 9-16 record as a head coach. That’s no mean feat given the poor state of the roster and questionable future at quarterback that has has been saddled with.
On the one hand, fans get that. They like seeing big plays to Tetairoa McMillan because they look easy. Easy, good football has been hard to come by for years around here. They like seeing a dominant running game behind Rico Dowdle because it both looks good and limits the amount of bad football that we’re forced to endure.
On the other hand, boneheaded decisions and rookie mistakes in play calling, game planning, and the starting line up are magnified when the team is bad enough to not be able to hide mistakes. Every stumble is a fall. Every fall hurts. And we’re all tired of hurting.
Fan expectations for Canales aren’t high, but they aren’t rock bottom yet. He’s in control of how they shift across the rest of the season. Nobody blames him for Andy Dalton or Bryce Young underperforming. He didn’t exactly choose his quarterbacks. People do blame him for starting Chuba Hubbard over the vastly more effective Dowdle, for running empty backfield sets against third or fourth and short situations, and for mishandling an offensive line rotation that has also been mangled by injury. They blame him for being too cute, both strategically and tactically, in situations that don’t have enough margin for error. In short, if he continues to consistently play around his talent instead of to it then he is going to start losing fans fast.
The cards Canales has been dealt are obvious to everybody watching the table. The question remaining is can he play them well enough to keep people interested. If so then we get to see what he can do with (hopefully) better cards in 2026. If not. . . well, we’ve been there often enough that we don’t really need to talk about it yet.
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