Canales loves his new old job

Posted Sep 10, 2009 by Brett McMurphy

Updated Sep 10, 2009 at 10:27 PM

Here’s a copy of my story on USF’s new/old offensive coordinator Mike Canales that will be on the front page of Friday’s Tampa Tribune.

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University of South Florida quarterback Matt Grothe reached for his Blackberry Storm one morning last week and looked for new text messages.

One stood out: the one sent to him at 12:30 a.m.

It was from USF offensive coordinator Mike Canales and it read: “Hey, I found a new play.”

“I was thinking, ‘What’s he still doing at the facility?’ ” Grothe said. “He loves it. He loves what he does. That’s what you need, someone that loves what he does.”

USF’s old offensive coordinator is USF’s new coordinator. Saturday marked Canales’ first game back as USF’s coordinator since the 1997-2000 seasons.

“It felt good again,” Canales said. “It felt good to be up there (in the press box). I could see things that I felt that were there.”

For old-time’s sake, Canales even opened Saturday’s game against Wofford with a play similar to the first play he called in USF’s inaugural game in 1997.

“It was the same concept,” Canales said. “But it was a different play in the way we ran it.”

With Wofford’s defensive backs playing deep all night, USF went to a shorter passing attack. The Terriers succeeded in taking away the deep ball, but Grothe picked them apart underneath. He was 19 of 23 for 155 yards with a TD and a school-record 82.6 completion percentage.

“They were giving us soft, that’s why we kept taking the underneath stuff and throwing to the flats,” Canales said. “They weren’t going to let us go down the field deep.

“So you have to take the mind-set, are you going to be stupid and pound my head against the wall and throw incompletes down the field or throw completions and move the chains? That’s the idea we took. You have to be smart and not hard-headed.”

After four seasons as USF’s offensive coordinator, Canales left for N.C. State, where he spent two seasons as quarterbacks coach. He was the receivers coach with the New York Jets for one year and was offensive coordinator at Arizona for three years, before returning to USF as wide receivers coach in 2007.

He was promoted to offensive coordinator in February.

USF coach Jim Leavitt said he thought Canales did “a good job” in his first game back as offensive coordinator.

“He brings a fire to the table,” Grothe said. “Everyone on offense gets after it.

“If he was on his last leg, he would still be in the office working. He’s here all the time, and it makes us want to work all that much more too.”

Canales said the play-calling is a group effort with offensive assistants Carl Franks, Larry Scott, Mike Simmonds, Steve Bird and Phil McGeoghan. However, Canales took full responsibility when Grothe threw an end zone interception on second-and-goal from the 2.

“I got overaggressive on the interception,” Canales said. “That was my fault, not Matt’s fault. I made a bonehead call. It wanted to show our opponents we’re aggressive in the red zone.

“Coach Leavitt talks about us being aggressive in the red zone — let’s put points on the boards. We scored five of the six times (inside the 20), with four touchdowns and a field goal.

“We’re going to be aggressive.”

Women’s hoops schedule released: Here’s the link to USF’s women’s basketball schedule that was released earlier today.