Coach Dave Canales, GM Dan Morgan and 4 words to redefine the new Carolina Panthers
The Carolina Panthers held their introductory press conference for new coach Dave Canales and new general manager Dan Morgan Thursday, pledging that all would be right in the team’s world again. Someday.
It was a lengthy press conference, clocking in at about 45 minutes, even though team owner Dave Tepper made only a brief statement and then didn’t answer questions. Canales and Morgan sure did, though — neither man is ever at a loss for words.
And when it was all over, the four words among the thousands spoken Thursday that I remembered most were these, from Morgan:
“We need some dogs.”
Now who doesn’t love dogs, right? But Morgan wasn’t talking about your family pet. He was using a football slang term — where calling someone a “dog” (alternate spelling: “dawg”) is a massive compliment. In the NFL, “dogs” are very talented, extremely tough, ludicrously competitive players, and the current Panthers don’t have nearly enough of them.
‘That logo has to be feared’
As Morgan put it, to give you a longer version of the quote: “We need some dogs. We’ve got to get some guys that are passionate about football, that love football. That want to come out every day and compete on the practice field, in the weight room. We need competitors. ... We’ve got to bring that back here at the Bank of America Stadium, to where people get excited about coming to see our team. ... When teams drive up to this stadium, we want them to fear that (Panthers) logo. That logo has to be feared again because right now, it’s not feared. So we’ve got to get that back.”
Yeah, when you go 2-15, nobody’s fearing your logo.
The Panthers have had six straight losing seasons and failed to score in their final two games of last season, running a puny offense as embarrassing as any NFL offense I’ve seen in three decades of covering the league. Canales will become Tepper’s seventh head coach since he bought the team in 2018, counting interim coaches.
This place has been a coaching graveyard, but Canales is gung ho about his new job anyway. He’s an electric speaker — that much was clear in the press conference. There was another nice moment occurred when he choked up while talking about his wife, Lizzy. (The two have four children and wrote a book together about overcoming their struggles called “This Marriage?” but that’s another story).
Canales can’t do it without a lot more good players, though, and that’s where Morgan comes in. It’s fair to wonder how much he’s going to improve the roster, in large part because Morgan had a big hand in constructing the current one.
Former Panthers general manager Scott Fitterer was the boss last season, and Morgan was the assistant GM. The two are close friends and made decisions together, and yet now here we are. Fitterer has been fired and Morgan was able to convince Tepper to let him take over the personnel side. Morgan has to show that, on his own, he’s going to hit on a far greater percentage of players than Fitterer did.
Let’s go back to dogs for a minute. Even Canales got in on this fun analogy, quote-tweeting a video clip of Morgan’s words Thursday afternoon and saying above it: “Wanted.... P----- off Dawgs! #Keep Pounding.”
Morgan gave a few examples of the kind of players he was talking about: Thomas Davis. Jonathan Stewart. Muhsin Muhammad. Steve Smith. Jake Delhomme. Luke Kuechly.
Interestingly, the former Panther linebacker didn’t mention Cam Newton, but I imagine that was an oversight, as Morgan was mostly talking about players he played with in the 2000s for the Panthers.
‘Talent recognizes talent’
Muhammad, who was a physically fearsome wide receiver and also came to the press conference, knew exactly what Morgan was talking about.
“When a dog passes a dog — and I’m talking about the animal now, not the people we refer to as dogs — and they are walking with their owner on a leash, they kind of know,” Muhammad said later. “They can smell the fear. They can see it in their eyes. They have an idea that I can intimidate this other dog. ... Dogs recognize dogs. Talent recognizes talent. Game recognizes game.”
This all reminded me of what cornerback Josh Norman once told me about Newton and how the two felt about each other before their training-camp fight in 2015, which in retrospect was credited by many for helping that team bond together and make the Super Bowl.
“Cam’s a good guy, but we didn’t really talk,” Norman told me in 2016. “We had an admiring respect. A respect, like, a sniffing kind of respect. You know when two dogs sniff and they know what’s good and then they go their different ways? And don’t really play with each other? Like that.”
So this analogy has been around for a long time. What hasn’t been around, of course, is all the players I’ve just mentioned. The Panthers’ best current player is edge rusher Brian Burns, and he’s about to become a free agent unless the Panthers figure something out with his contract.
The Bryce Young issue
Quarterback Bryce Young? Well, Canales was hired more than anything else to fix him. The 2024 team will hinge to a great extent on that relationship. But unless the talent around Young is substantially improved — two new receivers, one new tight end and two new offensive linemen, at the least — it’s not going to matter.
Given the Panthers also introduced a new coach almost exactly a year ago in Frank Reich, and all sorts of similarly excellent things were said about him then that are being said about Canales now, it’s absolutely right to wonder how long the new coach/GM combo will last. Even Muhammad, a recent inductee into the Panthers’ Hall of Honor and a loyal alum of the team, understands that.
“I think the natural reaction is to be a skeptic,” Muhammad said. “And you’re wrong if you’re not. I think these (current) players have seen turnover. This city has seen turnover. There’s an element of ‘Let’s wait and see.’”
That’s what the next seven months will be about. There’s a Super Bowl coming on Feb. 11, but the Panthers are as far away of playing in that game now as they’ve ever been. They’re reconfiguring everything — again — for a team that has gone 31-68 since Tepper bought it. Yes, it’s natural to be a skeptic. But there were a few stirrings of hope Thursday, as Canales and Morgan poured forth their vision and threw in the occasional canine analogy.
Who let the dogs out? Obviously, those two plan to do it themselves.
First, though, they have to find a lot more of them.
This story was originally published February 1, 2024 at 3:15 PM.
