For Dave Canales, Ron Rivera was an inspiration, then a mentor

And while the 45-year-old Canales was too young to have vivid memories of Fears or Flores as head coaches, what Rivera did resonated with him because he saw it with his own two eyes, from across the sideline and across the desk he now sits at.

The team he coached in Seattle and the one he saw Rivera coach shared clear similarities, from star quarterbacks like Cam Newton and Russell Wilson to aggressive defenses, so Rivera was an easy role model.

“Early on, before I had a chance to meet him, I was really first and foremost just impressed with the style of football that he had built here,” Canales said. “For whatever reason, probably Cam and Russ, that defense, our defense, Panthers-Seahawks was a favorite on the schedule every year. And being able to play them in different modes in the playoffs, on prime time games, coming here, you got to see the style of football that Ron had built on toughness, on fundamentals, on just good football, and so I was always inspired by that.

“Then you take in the fact that he’s a Latino coach in the NFL and, at the time, I think, was the only one, so then feeling that inspiration to say, look, it really just comes down to creating a fantastic football product. That’s what matters. But to see the pride that he represented the Latino community with excellence in football, so that was an inspiration to me.”