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Watching Bryce and Canales squander his and Jackson's work was too nauseating for him.

His play calling on Monday would get most coaches fired. Panthers could have won by 2 scores by just doing the obvious. It’s so perplexing that one has no choice but to consider nefarious intentions. He wants to be seen as a play calling savant and I honestly believe that he loathes running the ball successfully.

This idea to try and win with Bryce in this situation was the dumbest in game coaching decision I can recall from this team. So blantly idiotic.

They never even tried to pretend that he had to win tne job. I hated that. At least make it a fake competition for appearances. Naw, just install him.

For all the Bryce apologists, the Canales apologists are almost worse.

I mean, sure, he has made a mess of the football situation with his hires. I'm just saying, he is often overused to take the blame of others who ALSO are bad at their jobs. We see that often. Not just with Tepper. I mean, how many people did we scapegoat and try to give all the blame to before we admitted Matt Rhule was bad at his job. Same for Fitterer. Tepper's other pro team has gone to the postseason in back to back years now. Think they set a MLS record this year too. And they have barely existed. Tepper is not crafting the roster and shaping the team. Others do that for him. The QB room is the way it is because of the big picture hires of David Tepper. But on a practical football level discussion about why we suck at the QB spot and going forward, we got to talk about Dan Morgan. He is the dude doing the bad job there. I'm not trying to deflect any blame from Tepper. I just can't stand how Dan Morgan gets the pass he gets from some and the narrative......Tepper is calling the QB room, and this weird Morgan mantra that he somehow is silently against everything he part of building (not saying that is you but it exists here) I think with a good staff and QB, no one would care about David Tepper. I think Tepper has now limited his ability to get the good staff in the front office and sidelines. In hindsight, the Matt Rhule hire.....might go down as the biggest error in Panther history. Because it's all a snowball from that bad hire.

Canales is a fraud

I think its been said on here 1000x the likely hood of the panthers simply not extending the 5th and letting him play on the 4rth odds are astronomical. Its just not a viable plan. You either cut ties, extend him or pick up the 5th If they pick up the 5th then they are committing to 2 more years to Bryce and not only that relying on him to keep their jobs. Because if they pick up his 5th and its more of the same you damn well can count on Tepper blowing this up again in 2027

It was not the first time. But it all runs together. I can’t remember if it was him or the year before Frank whee saying during the week they were gonna have to get someone involved more and the game comes and it never happens. Seems to me you make them prove they can stop your run game before you just go to throwing the ball. OTOH I understand setting up the run with the pass as well but throw those backs out there and see what SF can do.

Well, we built on that momentum alright. LOL Trying to prop up a QB with a game plan instead of trying to do your best to win a game with the tools you have at your disposal is what you do with a rookie early on in his career on a bad team. It's not what you do with a 3rd year #1 overall pick when you're shockingly sitting at 6-5 and playing for the division lead. I mean, I get the temptation. I really do. You see all these stacked boxes and you know there's opportunities in the passing game but your opponent is constantly stacking the box for a reason. They WANT to take away the run and force you to throw. Taking away the run from yourself via play calling is just giving them what they want. Yeah, the box is stacked. fug it. Force them to key on the run anyway. We have to use the run to setup the pass. You can't be a pass first offense with Bryce Young at QB.

Canales outsmarts himself on a very consisent basis. In some ways, he is one of the most ill suited to be head coach of the Tepper tenure.

i find this to be alarming on so many levels im going to change the order of the portions i copied from Joe’s article i really have serious doubts about Canales’ common sense 1. A running team forgetting to run 2. Making this game plan about Young’s passing game momentum . Total idiot. It is about winning games not about young’s momentum. That is what practice is for , not live games god help us all. Article below Confused by the Panthers’ pass-heavy play calls vs. 49ers? Rico Dowdle probably was, too CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In two seasons here, Canales has juggled offensive play calling with his head coach responsibilities. Sometimes the balls end up on the floor. In two critical moments Monday night, Canales chose to go with a pass in situations where a handoff would have been the more direct approach. The first was the disastrous, first-and-goal play from the 1 where Bryce Young opted against running in for the score and instead lobbed the ball toward rookie Mitchell Evans, only to see safety Ji’Ayir Brown come down with it. The second one was just as perplexing. When the 49ers were whistled for roughing long snapper J.J. Jansen on Ryan Fitzgerald’s successful PAT pulled the Panthers to 17-10, Canales took the point off the board and went for a 2-pointer from the 1. But Canales ran a play that didn’t take advantage of the spot, with Young missing Jalen Coker in the back of the end zone. (Rookie wideout Jimmy Horn Jr. appeared to be the first read in the flat.) Canales said after the game he wanted to build on Young’s record-breaking passing performance in Atlanta, and thought the line was protecting well. But that lack of rhythm Canales mentioned was the result of never giving Dowdle the opportunity to get into it. When Dowdle ripped off a 17-yard gain on the first offensive play of the second half, Canales came back to him two plays later. It was his final carry. After an overnight, cross-country flight, Rico Dowdle began his Tuesday — at least on social media — with an emoji. Dowdle’s post on Xcontained no words accompanying the face with spiral eyes emoji, which EmojiTerra tells us symbolizes “confusion, dizziness, overwhelm or being utterly shocked.” Per the website, it’s often used to convey “feeling dazed, hypnotized, or caught off-guard in troubling or surprising situations.” It’s not hard to figure out why the Carolina Panthers running back would be feeling some or all of those emotions. Dowdle has been one of the Panthers’ fun, feel-good stories this season, an Asheville native who signed a prove-it deal with his home-state team and then got right to the business of proving it. Before the Panthers hosted the Dallas Cowboys in Week 6, Dowdle warned his former team to “buckle up,” then backed up his words by running for 183 yards and racking up 239 yards from scrimmage. But in a 20-9 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Monday night, it was Dowdle who was buckled up. And the guy who strapped Dowdle into a safety harness and threw on the child-safety locks was none other than Panthers coach Dave Canales. Dowdle led all backs Monday — including Christian McCaffrey — by averaging 6.3 yards per carry. But while 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was feeding McCaffrey a cornucopia of 24 carries and 31 touches, Dowdle finished with a meager six rushing attempts. That matched his season low from a loss at Arizona in Week 2, when Chuba Hubbard was still RB1 and the Panthers were throwing nearly every down in the second half trying to catch up. Dowdle wasn’t the only back Canales dissed. Hubbard had just three carries and the Panthers finished with 13 as a team, tied for the fifth fewest in franchise history. Some of it was about opportunity, or lack of it. With the 49ers’ two touchdown drives consuming more than 16 minutes, the Panthers ran just 43 offensive plays, which matched their low under Canales and tied for the second fewest in team history. But Canales, who arrived in Charlotte last year preaching the balanced offense gospel, conceded Tuesday that he didn’t emphasize the running plays on his call sheet nearly enough. “Offensively, just could not get our rhythm going. And really it just started off with the run game. I have to make sure that that comes alive,” he said during an opening statement to reporters. “That’s a part of who we are. It’s a part of what we believe in. We have two great backs that contribute to this team. The offensive line was blocking well and that was a missed opportunity by me. And I’ll do better in that regard.”

IMO 2027 is the year we draft a QB. But for 2026 we should bring in a vet or 2 AND Bryce. Canales says he wants to promote competition.. let them duke it out. Top 2 make the team. I honestly done care who wins, but whoever does is on a short leash.

The charge of a head coach is to win games. The rest of it is just horseshit. So, ultimately, he is to blame for the perplexing losses when he willingly sets us up to fail. I have zero use for a head coach that is some stooge worried about front office or ownership decisions above the goal of success and winning. That's Dave Canales. He is the one that seemingly cares more about every aspect that doesn't have to do with winning.

You absolutely can start someone over him with the level of performance he’s shown over a large sample size. Doesn’t matter what his pedigree is. I think the locker room really does like him, but they like winning more. If there’s another QB on the roster that can beat him out for starter, it won’t be a problem. The issue is, as bad as he’s been, I’m not sure there is a QB that can so definitely beat him out in that fashion. A rookie is going to struggle because the 2026 class is pretty poor and just in general, the transition to pro QB is more difficult now than it has been in the past because the college game doesn’t require QBs to play under center or attack the areas of the field a pro style offense does. And the retreads are always a gamble. For every Darnold or Daniel Jones that finally puts it together after 5-6 years, there’s a dozen other busts who can’t.

I could see a situation where a player has made enough $ to be comfortable, gets a few concussions and begins to realize he’s growing more and more forgetful and that his personality has changed/worsening depression. It’s just not worth playing any more at that point, regardless of how badly they want to hoist a lombardy trophy one day… and you as a fan can’t be upset with that.

I still contend no well run team would have him on the roster next year. You got to move on from him. And you can't put the #1 overall pick, 3 year starter as the backup...that creates horrific in house dynamics.

I do think there is a win/lose aspect he is presently in with his QB situation. Let's say he does some really good Steve Wilks play ugly to win coaching......with a really ugly game plan beats SF (which we could have), gets New Orleans, and a Tampa game. Completely minimizes Bryce Young. well, that would have put him at 9-8 on the season. And then......Bryce Young is going nowhere. Maybe Morgan replaces Dalton but the Bryce conundrum gets even worse. Now you go that 5th year. and we know Bryce is going to get unfair credit. He already gets absurd credit for anything that goes okay. you are to an extent damned if you do if you are Canales IMO. I want them all gone. I just don't think Tepper can get the hire. I think the only way Tepper can get a good hire....is to give a decent coach way more power than Tepper would like.

As a general optimist who tries to be even handed, I was in the “I have hope” but it’s now gone category. I acknowledged that the bad games were more frequent than the OK ones which were in turn more frequent than the good ones. I just held out hope that he could put things together and more consistently perform at those mid and higher levels. But I’m off that train now. I think he can probably improve his consistency a bit from where he is, but it’ll never be good enough. He’s on the roster next year because he’s under contract, but I don’t think we should pick up his 5th year option and definitely not extend him. He may start next year too because there genuinely are not as many competent QBs as there are starting spots in the league, so the alternatives are all trash. But we’ve got to get fresh blood in the QB room and find our next starter.

Dalton was signed to a 2 year contract. That's not done just for preseason. Bryce is in year 3. He doesn't need a mentor. He needs a push. Dalton was here to protect Bryce through the remainder of his contract, minus the 5th year. Bryce has been shielded from threat. Plummer was nothing but camp fodder in his 2nd year, terrible to the point he should have been churned in week 2 or 3 of preseason, but we bring him back year 3 and low and behold, he still sucks. No real number 2 or attempt to get one. No rookie QB. Give Bryce everything he needs and keep him comfortable has been the strategy for 2 years hoping to improve on the disaster that was his rookie season. It's still a disaster.

Canales biggest problem is himself. He cannot figure out what the average Huddler can. We ran the ball to substantially above average success against the 49ers but then continued to call pass play after pass play for a bad QB. The overall fault of the offensive struggling fall far more into Canales lap than even Bryce's. How many times has he continued to do the exact same thing? Go away from something working for unknown reasons?

I know he's is probably a 2027 guy, but what's the read on gunner stockton?

Canales' biggest issue, is Morgan has left him w/ basically zero options to go to. Canales IMO is fugged. I fully believe he could of coached us to a win Monday night. But winning in spite of Bryce fugs him.....with Bryce staying in play. I mean, what do you do. Put all your cards on winning in spite of Bryce and just praying they will move on from despite the odds being low

I disagree. I think he is not blamed enough. The one thing ex-players and coaches(across all sports) consistently talk about is how important good ownership is for franchise success. Of the overall fault, more than 95% lays at Tepper's feet. These are all the people he selected fuging this all up.

Panthers families going to be debating Bryce this Thanksgiving..