Carolina Panthers fans learned, no less than an hour after the hiring was officially announced, that their new head coach is very much online.
Last Thursday, Dave Canales was named the seventh full-time head coach of the organization at 8:30 p.m. ET. Then—at 9:27 p.m. ET—he changed his profile picture, updated his banner and tweeted this:
Excited for what’s to come but right now just thankful for my time with the @Buccaneers ! Amazing fans and organization. Thanks to Coach Bowles, the staff and the amazing players that I was honored to work with! I’ll be rootin for ya 15 weeks out of the year! Thank You!!!
— Dave Canales (@TheCoachCanales) January 26, 2024
But that wasn’t all.
He even replied to a fan early the next morning:
Nice ends today!!! Let’s get it!
— Dave Canales (@TheCoachCanales) January 26, 2024
Since then, he’s posted almost daily—hitting his followers with a bit of gratitude, some keys to success and even a few #KeepPounding’s.
It’s not exactly common for a person in Canales’ position to be so active on social media, even in an age where the 42-year-old is not even amongst the 10 youngest head coaches in the NFL. So, he was asked about it during this morning’s introductory press conference.
“What’s important to me is that we all grow to have a relationship,” Canales replied. “And as we have a chance to get into more detail about what we’re lookin’ for from a football standpoint, my hope is that I can show you what to look for in what we’re trying to become.
“My hope is that if I put this out there and I say, ‘This is who we’re gonna be,’ that we’re able to have this relationship where, like, you keep me accountable. ‘You said we’re gonna play this brand of football, you guys are crazy about the ball—we had three turnovers last week. We were -2 or we were -3.’ And I’ll be able to say, ‘That’s a great point. That’s not the kind of football we wanna play.’ So my hope is that we can kinda grow in that relationship as we have that expectation of who we’re gonna become.”
You heard him, fans—keep him accountable!
