The Tampa Bay Buccaneers formally introduced Dave Canales as their new offensive coordinator on Wednesday. Canales takes over for Byron Leftwich, who served as Tampa Bay’s offensive coordinator for four seasons.
Canales spent the past 13 years in the Seattle Seahawks organization, including a stint as the team’s quarterbacks coach in the 2022 season. He has plenty of experience in working with versatile wideouts. For one, he helped get the best out of the likes of Golden Tate and Doug Baldwin during his run as Seattle’s wide receivers coach in the last decade.
Canales will now be closely working with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. The offensive-minded coach hopes to make life easier for the two wide receivers, and as he touched on during his introductory press conference on Wednesday, he plans to stress the importance of regularly getting them “access into the secondary.”
“I would say, specifically, they just do so many good things outside the numbers with the one-on-one matchups,” Canales said. “That will definitely be a part of what we do. And then, moving the receivers to gain access — you can release easier if you move your receivers around, so we have a simple system that allows us to be able to do that, to give them access into the secondary.
“And when you get a big sucker like those guys with a free run, where they're not having to face press all the time — and they're both magnificent versus press, that's the cool part. Anytime you reduce football to just being mano-y-mano ball, it's just not smart football. So, anything you can do to get a matchup, an advantageous matchup or to move a gain to gain access, we'll do those things.”
Evans had a roller-coaster 2022 campaign in what turned out to be Tom Brady’s final season in the NFL, but the four-time Pro Bowler still managed to tally 1,000-plus receiving yards for the ninth straight year. On the other hand, Godwin made his return to action in September after undergoing ACL surgery, and he went on to lead the team in receptions with 104.
Three Buccaneers wideouts will hit free agency next month, including Julio Jones.
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