“I just regrouped them and said these things are going to happen,” Canales explained after practice. “It could be us on the top end of it, and we’re playing great. We have to refocus and just maintain, and go back to the next play. It could be flipped where you have a couple of series, a quarter, sometimes a half of football—guys, we got to regroup, and emotions don’t get it done.
“And so I was trying to explain to the guys that there’s going to be heated and passionate conversations that happen in a game. But the only thing that’s going to get us refocused is for us to be grounded, to go back to the basics and figure out and find solutions. Lots of yelling, lots of emotions, and all that, that doesn’t fix anything, but sincere conversations, eye-to-eye contact, and connection, that’s how we refocus as a team and take those steps.
“So I was just calling the guys up to say, ‘OK, we have a move-the-ball period. Can we handle going back out there, and can we just do our job?’ Full effort and get back to that focus in this environment, you know, at the end of practice when we’re tired, this is when we find an edge. This is when we make it a game. That is an advantage for us, by the way we work in practice, by the way we push ourselves, we’re comfortable being in these situations.”