Canales said Monday that he was bringing longtime assistant coach Carl "Tater" Smith onto the coaching staff to fill some of the role previously played by Jim Caldwell.
Smith, the father of Panthers special teams coach Tracy Smith, was the quarterbacks coach with the Seahawks when Canales started there on Pete Carroll's staff, among his many other stops in a coaching career that began in 1971.
"First of all, it just gives me an opportunity to talk about what an amazing support Jim was for those first two years," Canales said. "Having been a head coach, having been around coaches whom I really respect, and just remembering all the little things, building a training camp and the ebb and flow of the practices, duration, and how to challenge guys mid-season in different spots. With just all the things that as a first-time head coach while I had been with Pete for 14 years, it was just so good to be able to have somebody that I could call at any point who was fully invested in what we were doing, to help me address the team, add things to our practices that might help different things that we needed improvement on, just really practical wisdom, different ways, and someone who just I really grew to trust."
Canales described the elder Smith as "one of my primary football mentors."