Those are lessons Canales has tried to internalize, tried to adapt as he puts his stamp on his own program in Carolina. And Carroll said that in learning to build one of his own, Canales took all the right steps.
"Dave paid attention to what we were doing throughout," Carroll said. "He grew in our organization, our mentality, our culture, and all of that. He never fought the process; it was always drawing from the process. He became an articulate defender and presenter and owner of what we were doing. It was obvious. So he went into that job with structure and philosophy and outlook and vision for what he wanted to create, and he's a good enough communicator that he could make sense of it. That's what I would be looking for (in a head coach); I'd be looking for somebody that has their act together. This challenge that owners have and clubs have when they have to hire new coaches, it's a very difficult process, it's a very difficult decision to make. There's so much that goes into it to find somebody who can immediately have their act together so that they can be impacting with the way that they approach the game, the people that they deal with, the way they think, the way they operate, the exceptions, the vision, all of that.
"And Dave is equipped with that, and he can communicate it and convey it. I listened to him talk to his team throughout the year and heard him stay on point and stay true. He's given them a chance to have a really solid start."
Carroll was talking about quarterback his Geno Smith Monday morning when he said a thing that sounds very much like Canales. You can hear the influence if you've listened to the young Panthers coach in his year on the job. The message is familiar. The message is learned. The message continues.
"Players, after a while, they learn; yeah, I think that's what living is. I think that's what life is all about," Carroll said. "It doesn't matter where you come from or what you do, as you go through your life, do you experience stuff and then you have pitfalls and suffering, and you have to bounce back and come back and continue to discover and uncover what you're all about. And that's it, that's what life is.
"And so the stuff we're doing, what we're doing, we're just living with them and helping them, but I do feel like you can accelerate the process by helping people go through the steps that they have to take for the self-discovery that's necessary. It's going to happen anyway, but we'd like to think we can coach it along and capture a little bit earlier."
Carroll taught Canales how to take those steps a long time ago in Southern California.
And what he saw his old pupil display last year in Charlotte suggests the lessons were learned.