CHARLOTTE — Each week, around 15 minutes before kickoff, Dave Canales heads out of the locker room for the final time pregame to head to the field. He turns left out the door, walking down the hallway adorned with what has quickly become an iconic Panthers lair mural, which he suggested as the head coach, then turns right to walk through the tunnel, spitting him out onto the field, and jogs across the field while 70,000 fans echo cheers off the buildings in Uptown Charlotte.

And every single time, the coach's mind drifts, for just a second, to Carson, Calif.

"I pinch myself every time, and regardless of what stadium it's in, it's like 'How cool is this? Twenty years ago, I was calling plays for JV football in Carson, California, and I get to call plays today," the coach shared this week.

"I get to make time-out decisions and challenges, you know, and different things like that as a head coach."

It makes every game special for the second-year head coach. But today, even he has to admit, will hold an extra element. Because when he jogs on the field and looks across to the other sideline, there will be a very familiar logo: the Seattle Seahawks.

He began his NFL career in Seattle, spending 13 years with the Seahawks, starting as wide receivers coach and eventually becoming quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator. He spent 2023 in Tampa Bay as offensive coordinator, but this will mark the first time since leaving the Pacific Northwest that Canales will face the team that gave him his start.

"Just pure gratitude for opportunities," Canales said of what he'll be feeling, "and the opportunity that Pete (Carroll) gave me early on in my career at USC and then to give me a chance to go to the NFL as a 27-year-old and my wife's from Seattle, so we spent 13 great years around her family, around cousins, Christmas and holidays—well I was working, the family was getting together and, and doing different things," he joked, while being deep in a holiday week and playoff run.

"So I just have so much gratitude for everyone in that building, (general manager) John Schneider as well, for opportunities and Pete for putting me in different roles, so I'll have a lot of really positive, really grateful emotions going on in that game, and that's a good place to be."

Many of the offensive coaches in Carolina came East with Canales from Seattle, either to Tampa, then Charlotte, or reconnecting here. One of those coaches is offensive coordinator Brad Idzik, who spent four years on the Seattle staff. He and Canales became a pair while there, creating game plans and offensive attacks, running laps around the field hours before kickoff, and dreaming of getting to this point.

"You always aspire to climb a ladder and get a new opportunity," recalled Idzik the week, thinking back to that logo that gave him his first start as well.

"Honestly, my first NFL job under Coach (Brian) Schottenheimer and Coach Carroll, I was just drinking from a fire hose trying to learn as much as I could: no sleep, no social life during the season, and when I was in it, I was just trying to make it to the next day.

"But then, you get into it, you start accumulating like so many lessons learned in that first couple of years that you're in the NFL, and you're like, wow, there's so much football I didn't know."

Schottenheimer was the offensive coordinator under whom Canales and Idzik worked during the 2018-2020 seasons. The now head coach of the Dallas Cowboys pushed his staff, in particular Idzik, who was 27 years old and in his first NFL role when he came on staff.

"He was really hard on me my first year, and I'm forever grateful for it. Like, really hard on me. He upped my level of what it looks like to be detail-oriented," Idzik said.

"Sometimes it's a lonely place being in the coordinator spot because everybody has their groups to teach and you're just trying to direct the whole thing, but he wanted me to be there with him, and that helped me for my current role, and I'm forever grateful for him."

The trust continued to grow, so by the time Canales was made OC for the Buccaneers and brought Idzik along, the two were ready to form a unit that could extend far beyond Seattle.

So perhaps it's fitting that, as Canales and this coaching staff look to take the Panthers to the playoffs for the first time since 2017, the two teams in their way are the ones that brought them to this point, the Seahawks and the Buccaneers.

Most of the staff who were in Seattle with the two have now moved on, but emotions are a funny thing, and even the slightest whiff of nostalgia can take us right back.

"The majority of the coaches and stuff are all new, so it's more, I guess, like a sentimental value of the logo," Idzik explained.

Dave Canales gives himself that moment of reflection before each game, and once the ball is kicked, all emotions are gone, replaced with a single-minded focus on the game in front of him. But on that walk today, heading from the locker room, down the hallway, and through the tunnel, he'll allow himself an extra moment to appreciate where it all started, and how it led him here.

Admitted Canales, "This will be definitely special in that way."