The worst team in the NFL a year ago is back and ready for action, throwing a 43-year-old first-time head coach into the ring to see if they can snap the franchiseās six-year postseason drought.
That franchise is the woebegone Carolina Panthers, who limped their way through a 2-15 campaign a season ago, ultimately firing head coach Frank Reich after 11 games and moving onto former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales.
Canales has been around the league for years, previously serving a myriad of assistant coaching roles under Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll from 2010 to 2022, before getting the call from Tampa Bay to be their offensive coordinator in 2023.
Prior to that, Canales was the assistant strength coach during Carrollās final season at USC in 2009 and an assistant at Carson High School and El Camino College in Southern California, illustrating just how quickly heās climbed the ranks to one of the loftiest perches in American sports.
His reward for that climb is a preseason win total over/under of 4.5 and +550 odds of making the playoffs, per the team at Bet365 North Carolina sportsbook, illustrating how much further Canales has to go to get Carolina back to respectability in 2024 and beyond.
Canales has a big challenge ahead of him this NFL season during his first year as the head coach for the Carolina Panthers. At BetCarolina.com, we wanted to help Panthers fans and North Carolina sports betting participants. We looked at how all current NFL coaches performed during their debut season as head coaches to get a feel for how Canales might do. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com, we found the win-loss percentage for each active NFL head coach during their first year, then we found the average for all of the coaches. We also asked Reddit.com users in the subreddit r/panthers to see how they feel about Coach Canales.
Average 1st Year NFL Coach Win-Loss Percentage
Average Win-Loss % | .494 |
According to our research, first year head coaches in the NFL have won .494 of their games on average, speaking to the brutal task that comes from trying to hit the ground running in the meatgrinder that is the 32-team league.
If Carolina is able to hit that win percentage, itād mark the franchiseās best year-end total since going 7-9 in 2018, with the Panthers going 5-11 twice, 5-12, 7-10 and 2-15 in the interim, illustrating how down bad the franchise is at the moment.
How Do Panthers Fans Feel About Coach Canales?
Sentiment | Percentage of Vote |
Good | 91.6% |
Bad | 8.4% |
Whether a direct result of those miserable results on the gridirons of the NFL of late or a general sense of happiness at not having to see Reichās fraught face on the sidelines each Sunday, the consensus among Panthers fans about Canalesā hiring seems to be pretty upbeat currently.
Thatās because 91.6% of respondents to our survey said they felt good about Canales as the Panthersā head coach, compared with 8.4% who disapproved of his hiring, giving him a solid boost of support entering his first year as a head coach.
Now, itās up to Canales to do what it takes to turn those good vibes into wins so Carolina can avoid another 17-week-long faceplant, the likes of which Panthers fans were forced to endure a year ago.
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USA Today photo by McKenzie Lange.
