Dave Canales Panthers are 3-6 following a win

[electro's horse]

The Losses

2024

Week 3's blowout win against the Raiders was followed by an absolute dud at home against the Bengals. Lost by ten points. Hurricane Helene hit and I also blame Dave for this.

After a dominating 20-17 victory over the Giants in London with a game winning Daniel Jones fumble in overtime, and a bye week, the Panthes returned home and caught a team napping on them. Narrow loss to KC by three points.

A week after defeating the Cardinals 36-30 in OT in a hideous game, the Panthers went to Tampa and got shellacked. Lost by thirty-four points.

2025

The Panthers sabotaged the Falcons radio equipment and had an enjoyable 30-0 win against Atlanta. Then Drake Maye Drake'd all over them and they lost by twenty-nine points, with some gabage time making it more palatable.

Panthers had an 3 game winning streak against the absolute dregs of the league, ending with the Jets. The next week, the Bills blew their doors off and beat them by thirty-one points, and it wasn't even that close. 

Finally, Panthers snuck out a weird win in Lambeau, Victory Monday, and got beat by the Saints by ten points. 

Overall

Canales win percentage after a win is about 36% or so. It's sort of difficult to compare that to the rest of the league. The Jets, for example, have won 100% of their games after a win this year. His career average is good enough for about 21st in the league this year. He's better than last year when. I think that can be explained by two things primarily. The first is it was a young, bad team last year. This year, they're squeaking out wins against bad teams and then getting steamrolled by good ones, the Packers not withstanding (though after last night who knows). The teams the Panthers played in their 3 game winning streak don't exactly lend themselves to tales of valor and bravery.

Margin

The average margin of victory in the regular season is 9.5 points, with 25% of games being decided by 7 points or fewer. With the exception of the KC game, at home, coming off a Bye, all of Dave's losses have exceeded the league average. Not only that, but the Panthers have gotten destroyed, and I want to draw attention to that second Bucs game in 2024. They were the only good team that saw this offense twice and they completely blew the Panthes doors down the second game. Pats and Bills boatraced us. Panthers have a higher margin of loss than league average in general, but after wins it's substantially higher than even that. 

Dave Canales can't handle success

Gotta learn how to put the news clippings down. Canales is a confessed narcissist, so I imagine he spends a lot of time basking in it. Must have felt great after beating the Packers for someone like him. Unfortunatley the Saints didn't give a poo and came in and smacked the Panthers right in the mouth. 

They don't win very often after wins, and when they lose, more often than not they're not competitive. 

Edited 23 hours ago by electro's horse

[Dave Gettleman's Shorts]

besides the raiders game last season and the falcons game this season, every "win" has ended within a one score game either in OT or a game winning FG by a rookie kicker at end

against competent teams like the Pats and Bills this season, they get the door hinges blown off

 

[PleaseCutStewart]

I am going to assume that his record isn't much better following a loss... That's why he has a career win percentage of like 35%

[LinvilleGorge]

He's 10-17 overall so 3-6 following a win is roughly in line with expectations based on his overall record.

 

[HeelsPanthersCanes]

Bill Parcells would have a losing record with this roster and front office. 

[AggieLean]

Damn. Quite a few lopsided losses we’ve had during the Canales/Bryce era 

[hepcat]

1 hour ago, AggieLean said:

Damn. Quite a few lopsided losses we’ve had during the Canales/Bryce era 

Canales is not consistent. Gritty wins are mixed with blowout losses, which means there is an inconsistent effort from the players, and inconsistent and insufficient game planning from the coaching staff.

I would have liked to make the argument the team is just getting blown out by superior opponents like the Bills and Patriots, but losing to a 1-8 Saints team at home and the (now) 3-6 Cardinals were not consistent with that. 

It's a contrast to Ron Rivera's tenure as head coach where it seemed the players would generally give a consistent effort, but the coaching staff wouldn't always have a winning gameplan to beat the opponent. Which lead to some excrutiating close losses, especially early in Rivera's tenure as head coach. Canales is whiffing on both fronts in some games, leading to what seems like inexcusable blowout losses every other game. 

[mav1234]

5 minutes ago, hepcat said:

Canales is not consistent. Gritty wins are mixed with blowout losses, which means there is an inconsistent effort from the players, and inconsistent and insufficient game planning from the coaching staff.

I would have liked to make the argument the team is just getting blown out by superior opponents like the Bills and Patriots, but losing to a 1-8 Saints team at home and the (now) 3-6 Cardinals were not consistent with that. 

It's a contrast to Ron Rivera's tenure as head coach where it seemed the players would generally give a consistent effort, but the coaching staff wouldn't always have a winning gameplan to beat the opponent. Which lead to some excrutiating close losses, especially early in Rivera's tenure as head coach. Canales is whiffing on both fronts in some games, leading to what seems like inexcusable blowout losses every other game. 

There is something quite similar though about the losses to the Cardinals and Saints. The blowouts tell me something different - I think the team losses confidence against complete teams rapidly.  That is a coaching aspect, but also young players.  Tbh, I can live with that for now if they beat the teams they're supposed to and give a good fight in other games (as they did).

But the Cardinals and Saints games were stories of the offense either giving the game away or being unable to do ... Well, anything. While that is on Canales, too, both those games also featured standout (or truthfully standard) performances from our QB early and sometimes across the entire game.

I do think it's hard to evaluate Canales when he has a QB that can't or won't execute an NFL offense for huge stretches or entire games.

But there are signs of concern. Still, the very fact we had a win streak being a predictable as we were indicates the team has come along. And most of the team showed up vs the Saints, and I really think it's clear that was an incredibly winnable game with a different QB.

[hepcat]

17 minutes ago, mav1234 said:

There is something quite similar though about the losses to the Cardinals and Saints. The blowouts tell me something different - I think the team losses confidence against complete teams rapidly.  That is a coaching aspect, but also young players.  Tbh, I can live with that for now if they beat the teams they're supposed to and give a good fight in other games (as they did).

But the Cardinals and Saints games were stories of the offense either giving the game away or being unable to do ... Well, anything. While that is on Canales, too, both those games also featured standout (or truthfully standard) performances from our QB early and sometimes across the entire game.

I do think it's hard to evaluate Canales when he has a QB that can't or won't execute an NFL offense for huge stretches or entire games.

But there are signs of concern. Still, the very fact we had a win streak being a predictable as we were indicates the team has come along. And most of the team showed up vs the Saints, and I really think it's clear that was an incredibly winnable game with a different QB.

I compared it to Rivera because I never felt like Rivera didn't have the players ready to play and give their best effort. There's some exceptions to that but by and large the Rivera era Panthers played hard even if they were outmatched in talent or in scheme. I don't feel the same way about the Canales era Panthers. It seems like you said, they get down against better teams and they give up. 

And I agree, I think it boils down to the QB, and the lack of faith the team has in Bryce even if it's unspoken. With the Rivera era Panthers, they had Cam Newton, who had the talent to break open any game with his talent alone. Bryce is the opposite, the rest of the team has to keep the game close and hope Bryce will make something happen in the 4th quarter to win it. But for every great 4th down conversion and 4th quarter comeback he makes, he makes 10 awful plays to but the team in losing situations in the first place.

The bottom line is the team doesn't believe in Bryce and they're never going to be able to recover from that. It's done. Bryce will never be the guy, it's over, and unless he walks onto the field as a different QB than he's been his entire career including college, it will never change. He needs to be on a team with elite talent at every other position to even have a chance to be a winning QB in the NFL and that's not what you expect from a #1 overall pick, let alone one that the team traded multiple first round picks to acquire. 

Edited 55 minutes ago by hepcat

[frankw]

I was quite critical of Ron Rivera's game day coaching decisions and management over his years here. Especially when he coached super conservative playing not to lose. But at the end of the day he never had to try and win with a Bryce Young. John Fox had to try and win with a Bryce Young and he completely checked out and got himself fired.

The only. Only solution right now. Is to remove the anchor around our necks from the equation and move forward however we can and assess all the moving parts with the time we have left so we can move forward accordingly in the offseason. Not doing so is only going to further delay evaluating what we have in this young roster and this staff led by Canales.

[CRA]

6 minutes ago, frankw said:

I was quite critical of Ron Rivera's game day coaching decisions and management over his years here. Especially when he coached super conservative playing not to lose. But at the end of the day he never had to try and win with a Bryce Young. John Fox had to try and win with a Bryce Young and he completely checked out and got himself fired.

The only. Only solution right now. Is to remove the anchor around our necks from the equation and move forward however we can and assess all the moving parts with the time we have left so we can move forward accordingly in the offseason. Not doing so is only going to further delay evaluating what we have in this young roster and this staff led by Canales.

I think if you have a naturally conservative coach, they almost have to be paired w/ an aggressive QB.   Jake and Cam were naturally aggressive.   You know they often irritated coaches with their decisions often.  But both Fox and Ron needed that "correction" to their systems. 

Same is true for Canales.  I think his personal DNA is likely conservative despite the offensive tree he comes from (which is still the O) Bryce isn't going to challenge it because it he doesn't have the tools or ability.  But Canales' entire O in Tampa was pretty boring O....with Baker bailing him out on 3rd down downfield.