CHARLOTTE — Sometimes when a player is coming off a lengthy absence, they'll say they need to take that first hit to know they're truly back.

But Panthers wide receiver Hunter Renfrow just laughed when asked if he needed to take that hit.

"Not really," he said with a laugh about the shot he took from Jaguars safety Eric Murray across the middle last week.

"I was good, I mean, sometimes you have to learn the lessons and you have to go out there and face the trials and tribulations and come out better on the other side," he continued. "So that's part of it, and it was good to take it, I guess, yeah."

The 29-year-old Renfrow knows plenty about trials and tribulations, having missed an entire NFL season and not playing up to his own standard for the two before that because of what he eventually came to learn was ulcerative colitis.

So the route-running and the hands, those things never went away. But the physical ability to get out there at a level he hadn't in years, that was something he needed to prove he could do.

The 42 snaps he played in Jacksonville last week were the most he's played in a game since Nov. 6, 2022, or nearly three years ago. As that season wore on, the impacts of the medical condition which hadn't been diagnosed at that point began to wear on him. He played in 2023, but his availability and production waned, as he never played more than 37 snaps in any game, and averaged 21.4 snaps per game. And of course, he played no snaps in 2024, so this workload was something he had to acclimate himself to.

"I think your body through an NFL season gets callused," Renfrow said. "And I think a lot of the guys in here will tell you after you finish and restart the next year, once you take a couple months off, you have to get re-callused, right? And that's where I'm at. I have to get re-callused, take the hits, get the load on my legs, feel good about running that route 100 times and not popping anything or tweaking anything.

"So we're in the process of that, but hopefully we can continue to get better, continue to get callused and feel better."

In his experience, Renfrow said that usually takes a month to six weeks, which is basically the amount of a training camp and preseason. But he didn't get a full one of those, after a hamstring strain in the middle knocked him out for a little over a week. So he's still working his way back.

I feel like I'm starting to not hurt after every practice," he joked. "So yeah, I'm getting into the rhythm of it and starting to get better."

Renfrow caught two passes for 11 yards last week, and they're hoping to continue to build on his role. That's a need, since his experience in the slot is a good complement to rookie Tetairoa McMillan and second-year Xavier Legette.

"I'm so excited Hunter's here," Panthers head coach Dave Canales said. "I think just having him in the game, having another guy you trust to know where he's going to be. And I think just as we continue to just build this season, you know, we'll be able to build and create more and more off of things that he's done forever.

"We have like an amazing, 130-play cut up of Hunter Renfrow concepts and passes and things that fit in with our system. And things that I'm curious learning about and trying to figure out how to incorporate, so I'm really stoked that he's here."

Offensive coordinator Brad Idzik talked about building off that platform of reliable slot performance, but they also pushed him to learn a new offense when he got here. He took a lot of his work in the spring on the outside to learn the entire book, and now they're able to adapt and evolve as quarterback Bryce Young learns his game.

"It's just continuing to learn the guy when you get into a game-plan mode when you're putting guys in specific spots, OK, how do you want to highlight them?" Idzik said. "How do you complement the things he does? It's a lot of fun because you get to go back. I watched all his targets from Vegas, and I've been having great conversations with him on the side, like, "OK, what are some of the things you like? How do they use you?" How do they coach it up, and then how can we bring those conversations to Bryce so you two are on the same page?

'He mentioned it early last spring and in training camp he's like, I'm not used to just being put all over the place, in different spots in the offense and, and he's like, is that what it's going to feel like during the season? And I was like, no, this is actually a form of like conceptual learning that we want all of the guys to have. We had a lot of young skill guys, and we want to push them to conceptually learn. Hunter's included in that being new to our offense, so we put them in all the different spots so we knew what the concepts were, and now we get to pick and choose where those guys are going into a game week to maximize the matchups that we have."

Learning all that is a lot, and Renfrow is perhaps soft-pedaling his ability to do it in a hurry. He's soft-spoken anyway, and clearly feels like he's still earning his place here. But teammates who saw him through the spring were impressed by his ability to get open in ways a couple of young guys haven't learned yet.

"He looks just like Hunter to me," veteran wideout David Moore said. "Yeah, he's still doing freaky stuff.

"I tell him all the time he ain't got no knees, but he looks good, man. Whatever he's got, it's working, it's working for sure."

And Moore said seeing Renfrow pop up last week convinced him that the veteran was ready for this.

"You can see the excitement," Moore said. "We all saw how he got hit and got right back up. Yeah, he's pretty excited."

Moore joked that after he was out of the game for a bit before landing with Canales in Tampa, he took his first reception straight into traffic. "I didn't even try to make a move," he said. "I just went straight at the dude to get tackled just so I could feel the hitting."

Renfrow wasn't exactly volunteering for contact; he's not nearly as big and muscular as Moore. And since he's been back, he's talked about treating practice reps like game reps, since he's still a guy coming back from a year off.

So last week was a data point, and he's determined to continue to build and turn it into a trend.

"It was good," Renfrow said. "It was live bullets for the first time in a while. Preseason was some, but you get a full game for the first time in a year, there were some jitters for sure, some balls I definitely wish I could have back and go make the play on a few.

"But it was a good starting point."