Ask The Old Guy: Getting some guys back

——————————————————
Not a bad weekend when you get a chance to relax and two of your three division opponents both lose at home. Not sure if you actually get a bye week, but in case you don’t, a couple of questions. With a few questionable coaching decisions/play execution (Commanders and Eagles) do the Panthers set up a time during the week to show and discuss as learning points?

During the bye week do the coaches watch their various opponents’ games as they air live or just wait and break down the tape? Keep Pounding! — Tom, Trent Woods, NC

There are really no bye weeks, it never really stops, but it was good to take a nap that my wife feared was going to just turn straight into goodnight when I hit the two-hour mark. I woke up thinking I was in Canton or something. Those in the business usually try to spend as much family time as they can because there isn’t enough of it, but they’ll peek at a TV if it’s on.

Canales actually watches the “TV copy” (as opposed to the All-22 tape) each week as part of his normal preparation.

“That’s part of my process weekly,” he said Tuesday. “I usually start off with the TV copy of the team that we’re playing that week and the reason I like that is because I think the commentators do such a great job of painting a picture of the story — this guy’s just coming back from this or that, or this guy is having a historic run, and they let you know more specifics than you would just pick up from studying the All-22 or just looking at a normal stat sheet. There’s stories within the story, and I don’t know how much that affects the decisions that we make, but it does give me a sense of who we’re playing, not just from an Xs and Os standpoint, but where are they at, and you see the faces and you see the zoomed-in face of the coach, you see the zoomed-in face of the quarterback or the defensive player, and it gives you a sense for how comfortable they feel. Is there pressure here? Is there a level of confidence here? So that you get this just alive, just human kind of feel to it.”

And once they get back to work, of course they do the normal film study in detail, but they’ll also use the thematic lessons of the previous week to teach the guys, whether it’s how to respond to a weird dynamic in a game (Tracy Smith did a detailed breakdown of the Jags-Eagles finish), or how to handle the expectations of waking up in first place. Canales leaned into that one Monday, but kept going back to the specific football fixes the team needs to make each week.

“That was something we addressed. The goal of our whole group is to win the division, is to win the NFC South,” Canales said. “That’s a collective vision, a collective thing we’re striving to. Let’s win the first championship first. It’s playing out really nicely. It has nothing to do with how we perform. . . .

“And so while those things play out yesterday, we’re fired up about that, but it’s going to be about us preparing the right way for the Eagles this week.”