What Will Dave Canales Get Out Of Kyle Trask?

Dave Canales left quite the first impression in his inaugural press conference as offensive coordinator of the Bucs. Canales, much like his coaching style, was upbeat and energetic while speaking for over half an hour at the lectern with detailed and thorough responses.

Given the many variables of this year’s offeseason in Tampa Bay, the questions Canales was asked went in a number of directions. There’s no denying, though, that the most important topic for the Bucs’ offense is what they’re doing at quarterback.

Dave Canales Shares Opinion On Bucs’ QB Situation

As is it stands, Kyle Trask is the only quarterback the Bucs have under contract for 2023. More will be brought in, but for the moment, he’s the guy. Trask has very limited experience, as he’s often been a gameday inactive over the first two years of his career. He got his first taste of NFL experience in Week 18 of the 2022 regular season, but even then, he didn’t enter the game until late. He finished 3-of-9 for 23 yards in two offensive series.

Can Dave Canales work with Trask? Are there any free agents who he’d like to see in Tampa to compete? Canales addressed all of this while rattling off the traits that he instills in every quarterback he works with.

“The way that I’ve been trained is, ‘They’re ours until they’re not.’ So, right now, I’ve got one Buccaneers quarterback – it’s Kyle Trask,” Canales said.  “I can talk about Kyle for a second here. I really liked him coming out [of college]. If you look at some of the skill position players that he had there: Kyle Pitts, Kadarius Toney – he had the big return in the Super Bowl – and then you have Dameon Pierce [who] was another guy, right? Well, he was able to distribute.

“The thing that we’re going to help Kyle continue to build on here is to just be a point guard. Point guards don’t have to be the one to score all the points – you just distribute. Play on time, get the ball out of your hands, life is better that way when you do that. You’ve got these bears chasing you and if you don’t like bears chasing you, get rid of the ham – and that’s the football, right?  So just teaching him those principles, allowing him to be a distributor.”

Canales further explained the importance of the quarterback keeping things simple and playing off the talent around him.

“The other part, too, about quarterback philosophy and play – coming from a junior college background and high school and all that, we really didn’t care if the guy was 5’10” or 6’4”. I had a 6’6” quarterback – the one thing we were looking for is can this guy play catch? ‘Schotty’ [Brian Schottenheimer] called it the ‘me-to-you factor.’ I loved that – it’s just me to this guy.

“Learning who my skill players are and being able to distribute – he’s already shown he can do that. On top of that, it’s just a really quarterback friendly system because of the balance of the run and the pass. We’re not going to put him in harm’s way a lot, until of course you get into those situations where you’ve got to throw it a little bit – and then we’ll do that as smart of a way as possible.”

Dave Canales Used Same Traits To Get The Most Out Of Previous QBs

The idea that the Dave Canales offense is a quarterback-friendly one is significantly appealing. The philosophy he talked about helped him find common ground and a lot of success with Russell Wilson and Geno Smith in Seattle. No one would confuse the two quarterbacks with their different sizes and abilities, but under the same coaching discipline, they found out how to make it all work together.

Bucs OC Dave Canalaes – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“That’s where the system has proven itself. It’s a style of play,” Canales said. “If I go back to ‘SC’ (University of Southern California) for a bit, you just start rattling off the quarterbacks that came out of there – going back to Carson Palmer, you had Matt Leinart, then here comes John David Booty and then Mark Sanchez. Matt Barkley falls into that category, as well.

“One guy after the other – highly-touted, gets a lot of accolades, when really it’s a system that is friendly for the quarterback. Drilling that timing of getting the ball out and then having the balance of the run game. I heard Sean Payton say this the other day and I thought it was brilliant. He said, ‘You’ve got to take the quarterback off the high dive.’ I thought that was a brilliant way to put it because you can’t be leaning on him to make every single play all of the time.”

Canales went on to speak about how important it is to “teach the quarterback how to win,” something he’s learned from other coaches over the years.

“The best way to do it is just to hand it off to your talent in the backfield,” he said. “Teaching the quarterback how to win was critical. That’s where my training from Carl Smith – I mentioned ‘Tater’ – we call him ‘Tater’ affectionately. He really taught Russell [Wilson] how to win [and] how to manage the game. People can be critical of ‘Russ’ in different areas of his game, but the one thing he has done is he has won. With the exception of this past year, he has won at a really high level.

“Geno [Smith] spent a couple of years sitting behind that watching it like, ‘I can do that. I can manage that.’ And then Geno allowed us to open up the playbook a little bit with some of our pass stuff that he was a little bit stronger in. So we just tilted it a little bit this way or that way based upon who the quarterback was. We are always trying to look for a way to put the quarterback in his comfort zone and build from there.”

Trask Will Fit In The New Dave Canales Offense

Bucs QB Kyle Trask – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Does this mean Trask will fit in with Dave Canales’ system? Canales sure thinks so. But it’s not going to be relying on Trask to do it all. You look at the weapons the Bucs have around the quarterback at wide receiver, and they’re more than enough to help Tampa Bay move the ball over and over. Trask won’t be asked to do something on a play that he isn’t capable of.

“Really right now, the system is the system,” Canales said. “It handles any real type of quarterback. So, it’s not so much that we’re going to building it through Kyle, it’s just that as I get to know him and study him, the things we’ll do will be in his wheelhouse. And it’s going to be about our tight ends, it’s going to be about our backs.  It’s going to be about Mike [Evans] and Chris [Godwin], Russell [Gage].

“It’s really the whole thing. When I say system, it’s not so much the plays that are run but it’s the marriage of the run and pass and it’s the attacking style that we’re going to be in and out of tempos and multiple. So that part, really, you plug and play your talent. The plays become the plays but it’s the system that is flexible.”

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