The Dave Canales era is off to a hilariously bad start for the Panthers

While the Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t play a preseason game on Thursday night, fans still had plenty of reason to tune into the action.

Former offensive coordinator Dave Canales made his debut as the Carolina Panthers head coach and it went as hilariously bad as Bucs fans probably expected. The Panthers lost 17-3 to the New England Patriots in a game that featured all the frustrating hallmarks that everyone in Tampa Bay grew all too familiar with last season.

To be fair, it’s only the first preseason game and Canales isn’t a terrible coach. Someone doesn’t go from being a position coach to a head coach in two years without having some talent, but Panthers fans are getting a front row seat to everything Buccaneers warned them about.

Canales was rather stunningly poached by Carolina during the offseason. It was a situation that escalated quickly, with Canales going from a guy with an outside chance at the start of the process to getting the job in quick succession.

He earned the job, and that shouldn’t be taken away from him. That doesn’t excuse the absolutely bonkers red flags that worried Bucs fans about his potential return this season and why watching his debut was

Bucs fans aren’t surprised by Dave Canales’ awful debut as Panthers head coach

One of the biggest frustrations with Canales last season was his utter lack of ability to scheme the offense around two of Tampa Bay’s best players. Far too many times both Mike Evans and Chris Godwin were seemingly pushed aside despite the fact that they were very clearly the most talented players on offense.

This led to a style-over-substance reading of how Canales ran things that likely got overlooked when the Panthers were looking at his coaching credentials. It’s taken exactly one game for those tendencies to rear their head.

Part way through the fourth quarter of his first game as head coach, Canales’ offense had produced zero points and had under 100 total yards. It was an utter failure on just about every level that went beyond simply not playing the starters.

The lack of production of was eerily similar to some of the pitfalls that Bucs fans witnessed last season. Ihmir Smith-Marsette was the most targeted receiver on the night, but was completely ignored for most of the game until the last part of the fourth quarter.

This is almost par for the course with what happened with Evans last year.

It was abundantly clear at the beginning of the season that the offense should flow through Evans, yet Canales tied himself in knots trying to get the run game going instead. One game in particular sticks out as malpractice; in Tampa Bay’s loss in Houston last season, Evans didn’t see a majority of his targets until the fourth quarter of an offensive shootout.

Had Canales leaned on his best player, a 1-6 midseason slump might have been averted. We saw Evans change the momentum of the Week 1 win over Minnesota and a Week 2 win over Chicago, and how badly the offense struggled when he couldn’t find a groove against the Eagles.

Zooming out, both Evans and Godwin had objectively good seasons statistically. That’s overlooking how they were used, and it’s games like the one in Houston or against Carolina where Godwin recorded zero catches on three targets, that is more indicative of how Calanes ran Tampa Bay’s offense.

It’s hard to not get some sick satisfaction out of seeing that not much has changed since he left Tampa Bay. A big game was talked up about how Canales was going to be some sort of mastermind who fixes Bryce Young — which may still end up being true — but the bumpy start is pure comedy gold for Bucs fans.

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