CHARLOTTE — Jaycee Horn knows this is completely different. And he's lived enough of a football life to know that the suddenly improved fortunes of the Panthers' defense aren't something to take for granted, because it's been too hard getting to this point, and their toughest challenge is the one in front of them.

"It's night-and-day," Horn said of the current state of his side of the ball. "But we've got to keep going because it can flip."

Trevin Wallace was there for most of it last year, a rookie learning on the fly, responsibilities changing throughout the season, dealing with injuries, and all that comes with being in the NFL. He was also part of a defense that set all the wrong kinds of records.

And even now, as the Panthers are beginning to stabilize on defense and turn all those forgettable rankings to more respectable numbers, like Horn, he's trying to keep himself grounded on a daily basis.

The Panthers are a solid 12th in the league in total defense after five weeks, which is only outstanding in relation to last year, when they were 32nd in most categories. A 20-spot jump in those rankings is nothing to sneeze at, but he also knows they have greater expectations than being slightly above average.

"Learn from that," the inside linebacker and once-again signal caller said this week. "You want to learn from your lessons, it's like life or football, you learn from the lessons you went through, so you learn from that and build on that, right?

"Yeah, obviously you see the progress, you know, and we love the way we're going, but at the end of the day it's still things we need to build on, still things we want to be better at though, so you know that's just the key thing of the things we want to be better at work on them and the things we're good at, keep elevating them higher."

Of course, as Wallace considers that jump, he looks around the locker room, and there aren't many who shared that experience. This year's free agency was very intentional, with the immediate additions of five guys on the first day of free agency — Tershawn Wharton, Bobby Brown III, Patrick Jones II, Christian Rozeboom, and Tre'von Moehrig. Along with the return of Derrick Brown and three draft picks in the first four rounds — Nic Scourton, Princely Umanmielen, and Lathan Ransom — it was quite a renovation.

"It's crazy, though," Wallace said with a shake of the head. "I'm like dang, just from last year to this year, it's like a whole new defense, because it's people here that weren't here last year and now they're here this year."

By the time the Panthers got to the season finale at Atlanta last year, the defense was barely recognizable. Wallace was out with injury that day, as was Horn, at the end of his first Pro Bowl season. Derrick Brown was, of course, lost for the season after one game, which blew a big hole in the bottom of the boat. Looking back at that Atlanta game, only eight of the 21 players on defense that day are still on the roster, and only three started that day — cornerback Mike Jackson, outside linebacker D.J. Wonnum, and veteran defensive end A'Shawn Robinson. Of the 13 no longer here, only seven are still in the league, and that includes two on practice squads and one on injured reserve, and another who hasn't been active for a game.

Teammates are never going to disrespect former teammates, but there's also a recognition that the situation became untenable by the end of the year as injuries stacked up, and guys were being signed off the street on Tuesdays and starting, or even calling signals, days later.

"Some of our young guys, they grew," Robinson said. "They had great moments and things last year, and lessons that we all can learn together as a team. And I feel like they grew from those moments, and I feel like the guys that came in and the guys that were here make sure they worked on everything they needed to be better at communicating. We've got to just keep it up and do it the right way.

"It's no diss to my brothers last year, they were great. But having a DB back, it's like, Pro Bowler. And having Turk, his leadership, his skill set, the way he can dice up a game and carve it up. And having Bobby in there, I can be the Swiss Army knife. It's nice that we're going to all be out there and play at a super high level and communicate and be able to roll off each other's game. It could be anybody's name. We just want to keep it flourishing as a group and everybody takes off."

So far this season, they've done that.

Changes in defensive stats, 2025 vs. 2024

They're leading the league in first downs allowed (eight fewer per game than 2024). The Panthers are 12th in the league in yards allowed, 14th in rushing yards allowed (a week after allowing just 19 to the Dolphins). And it's not just the rankings, but the margins. They're giving up 83 fewer yards per game, 72 fewer of those in the run game alone. They're allowing 23.8 points per game (19th in the league), after allowing 31.4 per game last year. They're also in the top half of the league in third-down conversions allowed, knocking 12.7 percentage points off from a year ago.

Defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero ever noted that the one unit that is somewhat stable is the secondary, where Horn and Jackson, nickel Chau Smith-Wade, and safety Nick Scott were here all last season.

"I mean, there are certainly things you could point to. I think one thing I will say is that when you look at the secondary, there have been a lot of changes on our team, but the secondary is that we got a lot of pieces back from last year," Evero noted. "And I just think when you have guys that have that experience working together, that's always beneficial, and so as we continue to kind of grow with the newer pieces, having that core foundation of guys like Mike Jack and Jaycee, Nick Scott, Chau, those guys that have a lot of experience working together is definitely beneficial."

And that certainly helps, as they're breaking in so many new people.

Panthers head coach Dave Canales didn't cite any specific schematic adjustment; rather the cohesiveness of the work they're doing to get to know each other in a hurry.

"It's a collective group working together; that's what I see," Canales said when asked which area of improvement was most impressive. "I've seen that now for three weeks in practice happen, where they're talking before the snap, they're getting set, their eyes are right, and they're making adjustments together. And that's what I've seen, collectively.

"And I'm proud of the young guys Nic Scourton, who made some awesome plays Princely had a couple of plays in there as well. Guys I didn't get to mention after the game. These are guys that are growing up, these are guys that are figuring it out, and they feel the weight of accountability from their teammates to do their job well, and they're taking to the challenge and continuing to improve."

And the Panthers are seeing the tangible evidence of that kind of communication.

Again, those 19 rushing yards allowed last week also forced the Dolphins to pass, and that led to a season-high three sacks.

So for Robinson, it all works together, while they also see the areas for improvement.

"We've got to keep it up and we gotta play at a higher level," he said. "There's certain moments in the game so we can fully dominate and take over a game, but I feel like we have all the pieces and everyone knows that we have all the pieces, so we're just trusting each other and playing with that trust and going out there and communicating it like and applying it.

"For defensive linemen to make somebody one-dimensional, it's great. You know, we gave up 19, but you wish we gave up none. But that's the game. It's great that we can able to do that to a good back that they have back there. So we have to keep it up and keep stacking and give ourselves opportunities to put teams in one-dimensional situations so we can go out there and hunt together."

Even Horn, usually one of the farthest from the fray, can recognize that "night-and-day" difference in run defense, especially last week.

"I think we're doing a good job in run defense, which you know, it was one of our things we weren't great at last year," he said. "But you know, getting DB back, getting Bobby and Turk and all these guys on the team, they've they've been doing a good job shutting down the line, so I think that'd be one thing."

But he also knows it's not as simple as throwing a bunch of new faces at the problem, because that's been done before.

"No, no, it's work too," Horn said. "It's work, the long camp days that we had together, like, like I said, communication, learning each other's tendencies. I think we all know you can't just throw guys on the roster and expect it to work.

And as the guy in the middle of it all, Derrick Brown has seen that.

His injury in the opener triggered a lot of last year's issues and the roster changes that followed, but he's also seen improvement within the course of the last six weeks.

He said the Jaguars running for 200 yards in the opener — which brought back flashbacks no one wanted to consider — forced all those new faces to commit to this change, and each other. He said he began to get to know this new group well during OTAs, but that Jaguars game was still an eye-opener for them, and a reality check that they couldn't revert to old habits with a new group.

"It's just accepting the challenge that E puts on the table for us every week," Brown said of Evero. "I feel like the first week of all those rushing yards down in Jacksonville, that was a tough one, bouncing back, trying to fix, stopping the rushing attack in the weeks to come after that."

They came back the following week and held a good running team (the Cardinals) to 82 on the ground, a signal of the turnaround for them.

"I think that's one challenge we're taking up front for my group, especially," Brown said. "It's one of those things that no matter what or whose responsibility it is, when they bust out runs, that's just on the D line, so we take that responsibility wholeheartedly."

No matter the area of emphasis, what the guys who were around last year understand is that this is a new product, and one they've got to continue to work on, especially this week against a Cowboys offense that leads the league in yards.

But they also recognize what's happening here.

"It's wild," Wallace said when he sat back and considered the changes. "It's a difference."