Jay Gruden shut down praise of Dave Canales over how he ran the Bucs offense last year

For the third straight season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will have a different offensive coordinator running the show. Byron Leftwich was fired last January, a move that paved the way for Dave Canales to get the role and eventually parlay it into a head coaching gig.

With Canales gone, the Bucs hired Liam Coen to take over and hopefully help Baker Mayfield build on the success he had last season. It was that success, in which Baker nearly earned a trip to the Pro Bowl while turning in one of the best seasons of his career, that served as the basis for Canales getting the Carolina Panthers head coaching job.

For Bucs fans, that's overlooking the many not-so-great things Canales did with the offense as a whole last season.

While most experts seem to be glossing over his shortcomings, not everyone is willing to give him a pass. Former NFL coach Jay Gruden, who spent time with the Bucs earlier in his career, is among those calling Canales out.

Jay Gruden has a reality check for everyone hyping up Dave Canales as Panthers head coach

While breaking down the NFC South on the Clean Pocket Podcast, Gruden clapped back at Colt McCoy for waxing poetic about how great Canales did in getting Tampa Bay's offense moving in the right direction.

"Canales did a great job of creating matchups," McCoy said. "Baker knew where to go with the ball ... they created matchups."

Gruden didn't even let him finish the point before cutting him off with a reality check.

“[The Buccaneers] were 23rd in offense, Colt. Let’s not overexaggerate how great Canales was,” Gruden said. "They were 23rd in offense."

McCoy's argument seems to be a pretty common surface-level assessment of what Canales did for Bucs, but anyone who watched the team last year will quickly be on Gruden's side. A quick glance at the stat sheet will show that Chris Godwin improved his numbers from a year before and Mike Evans turned in another season of over 1,000 yards while tying Tyreek Hill for the most touchdowns by a wide receiver.

Sundays felt a lot different, though.

Canales routinely found himself drawing hte ire of fans for failing to scheme Evans and Godwin open as much as he probably should have. It wasn't until late in games, oftentimes the fourth quarter, when the two receievers would see their production spike.

This wasn't some masterplan to save the best for last, it was weekly coaching malpractice, all of which seemed to revolve around Canales' desire to get the run game going. Tampa Bay's offense wasn't bad last year, but it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been which was the major gripe everyone had.

Somehow Canales' worst trait as a coordinator is getting erased and repackaged as a strength. That's good news for the Bucs, who are going to eat Carolina's lunch of the same sort of offense is run against their defense.

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