Between Andy Reid and Pete Carroll sit four Lombardi Trophies and eight conference titles. So if you happen to find yourself on the receiving end of some praise from either, or even both men, then you're probably doing something right.
Well, Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales found himself there on Monday, from Palm Beach, Fla. during the league's annual meetings. Reid and Carroll, who have a combined 44 years of NFL head-coaching experience, were asked about Canales' very first season at the helm.
Carroll, now the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, stated that his former pupil did a "masterful job" of handling a not-so-conventional quarterback situation between Bryce Young and Andy Dalton.
"That was very difficult," Carroll said, via Darin Gantt of Panthers.com. "He's given the number one pick in the draft and all the expectations to come along with that. And I think along the way, he made tough decisions one step at a time in those decisions. I thought he maximized the position. Andy did a really good job when he came off the bench and gave him a real spark, and showed why David and his staff were believing in the things they were believing in. They saw success happen. They could feel it. They just got a taste of it, it didn't last as long as they would have liked.
"But then when he came back and got Bryce going, I thought that was an obvious illustration of why he made the decisions that he made. Bryce needed to sit back a bit and learn from Andy, and he was willing to. They went through that whole process, and when Bryce came back, he got better throughout the season and finished strongly. So I would think, I can't speak for them, but I would think that they found out a tremendous amount of information to head into this year with the quarterback position. I don't know where they are and what they're going to do about it, but I think they're in a pretty darn good place right now."
Before getting to that pretty darn good place, Canales made the decision to bench Young—2023's No. 1 overall pick—following a nightmarish two-game start to the campaign. Canales would then reinsert Young into the starting lineup in Week 8, after a minor car accident sidelined Dalton with a sprained right thumb.
Young proceeded to throw for 2,104 yards, 15 touchdowns and six interceptions over the final 10 games of the season. He also led the Panthers to a respectable 4-6 mark in that emergent run.
One of those six losses, which nearly resulted in the biggest upset of the entire 2024 season, came at the hands of the Chiefs. So Reid had himself a front-row seat to the work of Canales and Young.
"I thought he did a good job of reading the kid, where he was," Reid said. "You know his progress, I think they probably accelerated it. The fact that he backed up, let him take a step back, and then the kid took a step forward when he came back. That's brilliant on his part.
"A tough thing to do. That's a tough, tough thing. To sit down a first-round pick, and it's really tough bringing him back. And then the kid responded, so it was a great move."
Carolina, behind Young's 263 passing yards in Week 12, fell to the then-reigning champs by a mere field goal as time expired.
