The Carolina Panthers hired Dave Canales as their head coach in January in part because of his work with quarterbacks in the past two seasons.

In 2022, Geno Smith had a Pro Bowl season for the Seattle Seahawks with Canales as his position coach after he had started five games in the previous six seasons.

In 2023, Baker Mayfield had a Pro Bowl season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with Canales as his offensive coordinator after he had experienced a vagabond season with two teams.

The Panthers want Canales to get the same results with their quarterback, Bryce Young.

Smith and Mayfield had something Young doesn’t have much of – NFL experience. But, Canales said, Young does have a background to build on.

“He’s got a lot of experience, a lot of big-stage wins, the Heisman, a lot of pressure, things that he’s had to deal with,” Canales said during an appearance on FanDuel TV’s “Up and Adams” on Wednesday. “I’m going to lean on that experience. I’m going to lean on his poise.

“One of the first things I mentioned about Bryce is when you watch him play in college football and you saw him in those big games on TV, whether it was early in the season or whether it was later in the season against really good opponents, if you look behind the facemask, the eyes are the same, his countenance is the same. He’s just cold-blooded, and so those things were what really encouraged me to say this is going to be the top guy coming out because he’s the guy. He is him. Is that what people say nowadays? …

“Now it’s just about giving him tools, giving him the green light to use those tools in an appropriate fashion and playing a brand of offensive football that we’re proud of.”

Young won the 2021 Heisman Trophy as Alabama’s quarterback and entered the NFL as the first selection in the 2023 NFL Draft.

As a rookie, Young started 16 games, but the Panthers won only two of those contests. He completed 315-of-527 passes for 11 touchdowns and 10 interceptions and ran 39 times for 253 yards.

Young also got sacked 62 times. In the NFL’s AFC/NFC era, the only rookie quarterback who was sacked more times than Young was the Houston Texans’ David Carr, who got sacked 76 times in 2002.

Young’s sacks lost 477 yards. The only quarterbacks who have been sacked for more lost yards have been the Philadelphia Eagles’ Randall Cunningham, with 489 on 72 sacks in 1986, and the Indianapolis Colts’ Jeff George, with 481 yards on 56 sacks in 1991.

But Canales said Young’s reaction to the sacks showed something about the quarterback.

“If you watch some of the big hits Bryce took, the few plays that followed were some of his biggest throws,” Canales said. “And so to watch him again just kind of re-establish, re-focus, however he does that, and re-center, I’m really curious to hear what his endgame process is because I know he has one. It’s evident out there that he’ll just bounce right back. He’ll stand in there with courage, and he’ll throw a strike on the next play.”

Canales will be Young’s third head coach in Carolina. The Panthers fired Frank Reich 11 games into the 2023 season, and special-teams coordinator Chris Tabor finished the campaign as the interim head coach.

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Canales is now charged with transferring Young’s college success to the NFL.

“How can I get Bryce to play to his fullest capabilities?” Canales said. “And it all starts with relationships. It starts with that connected piece. They know me, I know them, so as we work through hard things, there isn’t this ‘This is mine and this is yours.’ It’s this collaborative thing of shoulder-to-shoulder really on a journey together and just taking on challenges side-by-side as opposed to: I am your biggest challenge to get to where you want to go.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.