Quarterbacks grow wherever Dave Canales goes, even if they’re under six feet tall.
During his official introductory press conference on Thursday morning, the new Carolina Panthers head coach spoke quite a bit about his new toy under center—the 5-foot-10, 200-pound Bryce Young. He was asked, perhaps predictably so, if there’s a special way to coach shorter quarterbacks.
“I think there are certain challenges,” he admitted. “I’m not gonna go and tell the whole NFC South what those advantages are. That’s kind of a proprietary deal that we’re gonna own here. But I will say that there are just certain things you can do to help. There are ways to find what that quarterback’s comfortable seeing.
“You got a guy like Drew Brees—who’s about my height, which is still short in terms of a 6-foot-7 tackle. So whether you’re 5-11 or whether you’re 6-1, you can’t really see over any of the linemen. So, there’s an approach to it.”
Well, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield is 6-foot-1 and he had one heck of a year under Canales in 2023. Mayfield, with Canales as his offensive coordinator, passed for career-highs in completion percentage (64.3), yards (4,044) and touchdowns (28).
Canales also paired up with the 5-foot-11 Russell Wilson for four years, when he was the quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator in Seattle. Wilson, from 2018 to 2021, completed 66.5 percent of his throws while averaging 3,720.8 yards, 32.8 touchdowns and 7.8 interceptions per season.
So the good news for Young is that Canales’ highly-successful track record certainly doesn’t discriminate against size.
