That word means a lot of things that pertain to today's NFC South-decider against the Buccaneers and beyond.

It means having the kind of depth to allow them to get to this point.

It means training up players and coaches for roles we won't even see this year.

And it means creating the kind of depth of human talent on the coaching staff to push this team forward in the years when contending for division titles is an expectation and not a surprise.

"What I learned early on is, the best way to elevate everyone is to have a developmentally-minded group," Canales said this week.

This is a long story, and that's a long process, but getting to this point in it is what Dave Canales is all about.

So whether you're working your way up as the defensive intern at Yale, or the tight ends coach at Maine, or you make your way to the NFL as an offensive quality control coach, you quickly learn the value of putting in long hours.

"It starts when you wake up, and then it ends when you feel like you're done," he laughed. "Which is, I know a bad answer, but usually if you're awake, you're trying to do something."

This year, that meant teaching Nick Samac and Jake Curhan the Panthers' language, so they'd be ready to go if needed, which seemed like was always eventually. Samac was on the Ravens practice squad, and Curhan was with the Cardinals, though he had a little familiarity with Canales from his time with the Seahawks. And as soon as they get to town, someone points them to the locker room, the meeting room, hands them an iPad, and here's Dean. And oh, by the way, special teams meetings start at 7:45 a.m., and they probably need you in the scout team meeting before that.

"Basically, we're trying to get them up to speed as quickly as possible," Petzing said. "But you're just trying to find little pockets of time. Obviously, it's still busy, you still have all the other responsibilities, but try to find any pocket of time that you and they have, and even if it's 15, 20, 30 minutes, grab them. Hey, we're going to hit this part of our offense right now, or hey, we left off here, let's pick that up and go there.

"So it's really just a normal week, and then you're trying to find those guys in pockets of time and steal it where you can."

It's harder when you have a family, who might be wondering where you are.

"Obviously, you're giving up something," he laughed. "Like you know, you're not going to see your family for an extra half hour or something like that. So you're obviously trying to find the balance within the week. Make sure no one's too pissed at you."

The payoff is when those guys you're coaching up are called upon, like Curhan was when he played two different positions in the win at Green Bay, or to start at right against the Rams, when the Panthers pulled off a shocking 31-28 win. When things like that come up, it makes the hours worth it, and when the boss recognizes your value and calls it out in public, that's pretty cool too.

"It's funny because obviously this is the only NFL building I've ever been in," Petzing said. "But it's a good mentality, I think, anywhere is to try and build your depth from within and care for the people that are in the building.

"I think that matters. So you get a little extra effort from people."

It's about the teaching, and a lot of Chaudhari's job this year has been working with undrafted rookie linebacker Bam Martin-Scott. He's someone they think has potential for the years to come, if not necessarily this year. But if you're on the 53-man roster, there's also a chance they might need you, like in San Francisco or Seattle. Getting an inside linebacker to the point of being functional takes a lot of time and different methods. So Chaudhari might be in front of the 8K wall (a series of projectors that can beam life-size images of formations in front of players), or it might be supplemental classwork using props.

"The number one way would be reps, but they're not afforded that often, right?" he said. "So you're trying to replicate that as much as possible, and so using the 8K to simulate formations and alignments. And then, I made a bunch of formations on a big sheet for him, and we use poker chips, and he's got to move them around when I give him a different call. But sometimes it's jumping from call to call to call to call. Jumping, making your processor work better, and knowing how to put certain calls in certain buckets.

"In a lot of those moments you spend with someone like that when you're developing them, you, as a teacher, have to approach it as if you are their colleague. So they have to be able to say, 'I don't know that,' or 'I don't understand that' to you. And as soon as you get that part and that trust between like me and Bam, then you could really make a lot of headway because they're just open to be able to say, I don't know. This is such an alpha male world, so if you don't know something, they're so nervous about losing their job, so they need someplace that can be safe."

It might be easier to confide in an assistant position coach, but ultimately, if Chaudhari's doing his job right, Martin-Scott can talk through questions with linebackers coach Pete Hansen, defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, or even Canales.

"Ultimately, if I do my job really well as a teacher, then he won't need me anymore, and he can function on his own," Chaudhari said.

As an educator, he's grateful he has that kind of opportunity, and he knows not everyone approaches it the way Canales does.

"It starts with Dave," Chaudhari said. "Because he made it really clear that he wants us as coaches to develop, but also at the same time to develop players. Because the truth is, for a guy that's won a lot of games in this league and gone to the playoffs and Super Bowl and all that stuff, he understands that what you think is the bottom of your roster could very easily become the top of your roster, from week to week. So, investing in your players is huge because at some point, you run out of players.

"So you, like if you find something that you like about somebody, then you need to grab onto that and build up all the other parts of that individual, and you're trying to make them as complete and whole a person as possible."

Colmon has the pedigree, at least, coming from John Carroll University in Ohio. He played his games in Don Shula Stadium. His alma mater is a who's who of the NFL, from coaches to general managers to Polians, the sons of Panthers original GM Bill Polian. But his experience is short, coming off his first full year as a receivers coach at Sacramento State last year.

So he's learning as he's teaching, and that's football and people. He's figured out that Horn needs to say it back to him to make sure he's got it right, while Coker (who played a lot last year) or Tremayne (Stanford guy) are processing it in other ways.

"What I've learned is they're all different people, and that's OK," Colmon said. "It's hard to get all these guys in this one row like ducks; they're all floating ducks nowadays. I'm not saying I'm old and wise or whatever, but like just from the older and wiser people who have told me and observing these guys in different rooms that I've been a part of, they're all different, and you've got to embrace it and find out how you're going to get the most out of every single one of them

"So just adapting to every single person and being able to give them whatever way they need to, whatever hits their brain, that's the way I'm going to try to say it to them."

Part of Canales' method is to also allow his youngest coaches to present to the entire team, which can be a little intimidating when your last big meeting was to a dozen Sacramento State Hornets receivers. Colman talked to the full team one Wednesday about being on the same page, which is a useful skill in the chaos that is a typical NFL game — and that's even if no one gets hurt. So if quarterback Bryce Young has a choice call, everyone on the field has to know what those choices are, and it's helpful if they've banked enough reps to identify it on the fly, and have what Colmon calls that "telepathy."

Before that presentation, Colmon wasn't sure he slept much.

"It definitely was nerve-wracking, but I think what helps me out the most, with all of the situations that could be nerve-wracking, is that I try to prepare the hell out of it," he said. "So then when it comes, it's like you're going, and you're flowing, and that's what you were preparing for. Whenever I'm prepared, I'm not nervous at all, but if I'm not prepared, they'll know it because it's like, OK, holy s---.

"As long as I prepare, then I'm good. I love that, and you can control that. That's what helps, right?"

It comes in handy a lot of times, like when Jimmy Horn catches a fourth-down conversion against the Dolphins, and you see that education and preparation pay off.

That comes in handy when it's time to cross-train, like the weeks when Martin-Scott had to practice with the outside linebackers because injuries left them thin there, teaching a rookie two languages at once.

But Emini also has a role beyond just coaching on the grass. Again, the Panthers kept 11 rookies this year (with a 12th on injured reserve), and they've had the third-most games played by first-year players in the league.

So developing involves more than just football practice, there's a plan. Every two weeks, the staff meets to discuss the young players and the practice squaders, and it includes the athletic training and strength staff, nutrition, and coaching and scouting.

And when you invest as deliberately in young people as they have, those meetings are critical for the 2026 and 2027 Panthers, and beyond, in addition to the ones that have to play right now (and a lot of them are).

"We have a meeting once every two weeks talking about all our developmental guys, how they're progressing in the weight room, nutrition-wise," Emini said. "It could be on the grass with us, and we all go through where their pros and cons are, and if they're progressing or regressing throughout the whole season.

"So obviously it starts with Dave, but everyone's bought in."

And because he's been that undrafted guy fighting for a job, he can speak their language. That's why he and Thornton would spend so much time together before practice, "really sharpening those tools" every day. But he's also sharpening his own tools.

After taking a year off when his playing career ended, and having a son, he kept thinking about his future and kept coming back to coaching. He got a break with a Bill Walsh Fellowship gig with the Rams and Cardinals, and spent last year coaching cornerbacks at Colorado State-Pueblo, a Division II school. And when he came to Charlotte a year ago for a coaching convention, he shot a message to Evero, who was on the Rams staff when he was playing. That opened the door, and now he's an undrafted rookie all over again.

So as much as he's training players, he's also learning from people like Evero, like passing game coordinator Jonathan Cooley, or secondary coach Renaldo Hill.

"It's a big transition, because obviously you've played and so you know how to do the techniques that might be asked and how to get that done," Peterson said. "But being on this side of it, there's a formula to how to go to how to get that. Because as a player, which I was, you're really getting the back end of it, of coaches are doing all this work in the off time where we're at home recovering, doing our studying and stuff, and the coaches are putting the game plan for us together, and they're like, OK, this is how we can be successful, and then we kind of bring it to life.

"So it's on the different side now. How can we set our players up to be successful, and that takes a lot of detail?"

Peterson had to wait until Week 16 to give his presentation to the team. His topic was one that came in handy that week.

"I wanted to focus mine around being where your feet are," Peterson said. "Because I think that's a big concept that people do not think about throughout the day. You're focused on getting somewhere in life, and you may have injuries, you may have family things going on, you may not be where you want to be in your position, but being where your feet are has gotten you to this point.

"Just remembering the little details of being present really makes your future what you need it to be. So you can focus on things that you want to do the next day in like three days, a week, a month, a year, or two years from now. If you really focus on today and what you have to do, all those things will fall in line.

Week 16: What happened in Week 16? Oh, that's right, they beat the Buccaneers to set up a game like today's.

So he remembers the emphasis his mentor put on exposing players to new skills, cross-training them so they'd be able to fill in at a moment's notice if they needed to. But he also remembers doing that himself, which is why he wants his guys to have that chance.

"It's a great opportunity for those guys to stand up there to have confidence and to work on their craft," Canales said. "Because they will be called someday to stand up in front of the room, be confident, and be able to deliver a message.

"And on top of that, it's also important to make sure that the staff has roles in the game plan, becoming an expert, and that's kind of how I started."

When Canales was young as a coach, Carroll invested their four-minute offense (when you're trying to run out the clock late in games) in him, gave it to him to run with. Now, when you hear Canales talk about the importance of the run game, you can tell where it comes from.

"That was kind of like my specialty, so I just threw myself at it in between all the other tasks that I had to do," Canales recalled. "And when you do well, then the coach goes, OK, why don't you take third-and-short, great, and you just start adding responsibilities. Try to do a great job, have ideas, and that's what we try to give our guys here, skin in the game.

"And then what happens is we just have a really well-rounded staff, and it eliminates groupthink because then you get fresh ideas, you get, oh, shoot, I didn't think about that play in this area. So we love doing that, and our guys have done a great job."

Canales went back, over a decade ago, to a meeting he presented to the Seahawks about a particular play they thought they could use in that four-minute situation, a pass in the flat to fullback Derrick Coleman.

They called it "H 7 Ladybug" because it could come from two spots.

"So I would try to find a way to get the fullback free in the flat," Canales grinned, thinking about a play from over 10 years ago while simultaneously in the middle of the most important week of his professional life. "Do we rub the inside linebacker? Can we send two guys up, with different looks, and try to find the best access? So you know, it starts off pretty simple, but the first time one of those hits in a game, it's a special moment."

In the 2014 opener against the Packers, the Seahawks called that play.

With 2:37 left on the clock, on fourth-and-1, quarterback Russell Wilson found Coleman in the flat. They'd have been content with the needed yard and getting down, but Coleman went to the end zone.

"Even better," Canales grinned.

The Packers couldn't do anything with the next set of downs, punted it back, and the Seahawks kneeled out the clock for a win.

"And I couldn't be more proud," Canales said. "To be able to have an impact on the game, even in a small way, that way."

The Seahawks went 12-4 and went to the Super Bowl that year. So that small part became part of a larger whole. And that young assistant and his specialty play that he worked overtime to master was a part of it all.

That's the kind of thing Dave Canales is trying to build here.

That's why he's investing so much of his time investing in others, because he's seen how it can pay off, and he wants to see that dividend again and again.