Dave Canales explains what went wrong vs. Commanders, what needs to change

Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales discusses the loss to Washington.

Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

The Carolina Panthers had another long day at the office, dropping 40-7 to the Washington Commanders. Following the game, head coach Dave Canales met with the media to discuss everything that went wrong.

Opening Statement

“It starts with the football. You got to take care of the ball if you want to be able to be
competitive in games in this league. Two early ones turned into scores between giving the ball
away and just not being able to get off of the field. I think they scored on all but one drive.
We’re going to have to get right back to the film and just kind of look at the basics and
fundamentals of what we’re trying to do all across the board. That’s really the story of the
game. Mustered up a nice drive there at the end. We looked like us and we didn’t look like us
early on. Trying to figure out how to get that consistency to show up for our group so we can
give ourselves a chance to be competitive in these games.”

If this was an embarrassing loss

“I’m proud of our guys. I’m proud of the work that we do. For me, I never go to that place. For
me, it’s about honoring the guys that are there and that try their butts off in practice. I’m proud
of that, but it’s got to show up on game day. We can have great weeks of practice, or whatever
it is, but the carryover and the mentality, that part needs to be consistent for four quarters.”

Why good practices aren't carrying over to games

“Yeah, just the discipline of going right back to the fundamentals. I have to look at the film. We
just have to attack those things and just be honest about it like we’ve been and show the
breakdowns of the plays, show the breakdowns of the offensive failure. Part of that’s on me,
part of that is on allowing them to hammer our core of our principles and not keeping them off
balance with certain things. Parts on the players with the execution, just the basic parts of what
we're trying to get done, and we can't have people running in the backfield on runs. That's not
who we are. That hasn't shown up that way in any of the games we've played. Hopefully I
answered that.”

Andy Dalton's day

“It just wasn't good enough. You know, that's true, and he knows that. That's something that,
again, we just got to be honest about on our ‘Tell the Truth Monday’, and look at the things that
we can do better from an execution standpoint."

What he wants to see moving forward

“I just want to see the great work that we're doing carry over to the game for four quarters.
Where we're taking care of the football, where we're matching our principles the right way,
we're fitting our runs. We know that teams are going to get their wins, but we got to balance
this thing out and play good football. The trajectory is to find good football, that's the greatest
challenge. Can we just play good ball? So that's what we got to get back to.”

Attitude of the team

"I think their attitude has been great. They’ve showed a lot of real toughness in the way that we
continue to come back to work and look at it that way. I think it starts with the staff being really
honest about what the things are. We're not trying to sugarcoat things. Again, there's no great
speech, there's no great motivation. From an emotional standpoint, it's brass tacks, play better
football, and that's where we got to go.”

If there was any thought to putting Bryce Young in earlier

“After the last drive, after the touchdown drive, if we would have got the defense off we would
have put Bryce in and hopefully to get a couple of series there. Just get him out there to play.
These are those opportunities to do it and unfortunately, we didn't get off the field, so we were
just relegated to that last drive."

Defensive struggles

"Honestly, I love our scheme. I've seen it and played against it. I've seen it in person now for a
good while, and I love our scheme. The challenge for us is to bring a new group together. We
kind of start back at the fundamentals as we add these pieces and we got to play good team
football.”

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