CHARLOTTE — Jokes are only truly funny if everyone gets to laugh. Dancing's not as much fun if only a few people are moving.

So the key is having everyone involved.

Or almost everyone, at least.

When legendary linebacker Luke Kuechly was asked to describe the 2015 Panthers team in one word, he thought for several seconds, furrowing his brow and concentrating because Kuechly takes every assignment seriously.

When he finally brightened up and said, "If it had to be one word, it would have to be 'Fun!," he proceeded to talk for another seven minutes. There was that much material.

On the Carolina Panthers in 2015, everyone was having a ball. And at a certain point in the year, it began to create its own momentum, and it was hard to decide if they were having so much fun because they were winning so much, or whether they were winning so much because they were having so much fun.

So that meant Halloween pranks on the biggest star on a team full of them. Or an alligator in the head coach's shower. Or fried chicken every Friday, if you weren't lifting weights shirtless instead. Or celebratory team pictures on the sidelines, which by the end of the year, almost everyone had a chance to take part in.

"It's chicken and egg, right?" former tight end and acclaimed television analyst Greg Olsen said. "Winning, I mean, the reality of the NFL is it's only fun if you win. You can have a team full of really fun guys and a lot of great locker rooms. We had some years where we had a lot of the same personalities, and the year didn't go as well, and we had a couple of tough losing streaks, and you start losing two or three games in a row. I don't care how much you love the guys in the locker room. It sucks. This is an outcome-driven business.

"When the outcomes are really good and the outcomes go as well as they did for us that year, especially, everything's fun. You could practice all day, every day. Meeting's tomorrow at 7. Great. I'll be here at 6.

"That stuff has a way of kind of feeding itself."

Of course, it's not nearly as simple as that.

It took head coach Ron Rivera being willing to give a little. It took quarterback Cam Newton being willing to laugh along with the jokes at his expense. It took Luke Kuechly being willing to step out of his studious comfort zone. It took established stars from outside, like Peanut Tillman and Jared Allen, to be willing to come to a new place and transform themselves into role players. It took stars being not just willing but eager to eat with equipment guys and operations staffers, to hear their stories, to become a part of their adopted families.

It took a lot of people. And it took all of them pulling in the same direction.

"There wasn't a lot of division on the team because our most influential people thought it was important to always include the whole group," long snapper JJ Jansen said.

And as a result, they all felt like part of something special, and became something special.

Oh, by the way, it also took a $400 fake alligator that way too many people thought was real.

About that alligator. It was all Don Shula's fault, really.

Even though he grew up in a military family, Ron Rivera always had a broad-based view of leadership. If his players were the ones taking the reins, he was fine with that, as long as it was within the parameters they had established. And he tried to involve as many people as possible, including his assistant coaches.

So as the season went on, and the Panthers kept stacking wins, he'd have a different coach speak to the team every Saturday night at the team meeting. When it was offensive coordinator Mike Shula's turn, he knew a little something about the pressure that builds on successful teams.

Shula's father, Don, was the coach of the NFL's only undefeated team, the 1972 Dolphins. And even though his son Mike was only 7 years old when it happened, one of his favorite stories was seared into his memory.

"So Mike got up and he talked about when his dad's team was still undefeated and how tight everybody was getting," Rivera recalled. "And his dad got up and told the team, guys, you've got to hang loose, got to stay calm, it'll be all right.

"Well, apparently the story goes that a group of the guys got a small alligator and put it in the shower. And the coach walks in, and you know, there's this alligator, and he's in a little bit of a panic. So he gets up in front of the team, and he starts getting after the team, and Larry Csonka was laughing really hard. He looked at Czonka and said, 'Hey, what are you laughing about?'"

"Well, just so you know, coach, I'm the guy that wanted to tape his mouth shut," the Hall of Fame fullback replied.

When Mike Shula finished that story, all the players had laughed and gotten the message.

But Peanut Tillman was more than just amused; he was inspired.

Tillman was one of the elders in the room, with a decorated 12-year career with the Bears before he walked in the door for what he figured was his final season in the league. So he had built up the wisdom of more than a decade of football, and the self-awareness to know he was just the man for the job.

"I'm not going to say I was washed up, but I definitely wasn't in my prime," Tillman said. "I was still a good player, but my role was comedic relief."

(That was far from his only job, as he taught them the ways of the Peanut Punch, and creating turnovers was as much of their persona as dabbing.)

After the Panthers took their only loss of the regular season to the Falcons, the veteran cornerback recognized that the pressure might be getting to some people, and he knew what he had to do.

"After that loss, I felt like everyone just, pardon my French, got a tight butthole," Tillman said with a laugh. "I was just like, dude, at best we lose one game and we're still in the playoffs and we got home-field advantage. It's like, we're OK.

"But I felt like the entire building, coaches included, got real stiff. And it's just like, yo, man, we've had an amazing run. OK, we don't beat the '72 Dolphins. So what? We're still doing OK. Then I thought about Shula and the story he told."

Even 10 years ago, Charlotte was a growing metropolis, the kind of place with influences from all over the world. But it's not quite as tropical as Miami, especially in late December, so finding an alligator wasn't easy.

"So I went on Etsy, I found this alligator that looked pretty damn rude," Tillman said. "I paid about 400 bucks for this thing. So it was legit."

Then, he found co-conspirators, but that was easy in the defensive backs room. He enlisted safeties Kurt Coleman and Roman Harper, and they placed the fake alligator in the shower stall in Rivera's personal locker room downstairs.

And then they waited for their head coach to get a morning workout in, then a quick shower before they got on with their day.

To say the least, Rivera wasn't expecting a large reptile when he got undressed and headed for the shower.

"I didn't think it was funny," Rivera explained. "I mean, I was getting ready to jump in the shower, so you can imagine you got nothing on. You see this thing, and you grab your towel, and the only thing you have to throw at him is a bar of soap.

"That didn't sit too well at the moment, but he loved it, and he was able to tell everybody he got me."

Rivera didn't stay angry long, but Tillman didn't know that when his coach came looking for him with a scowl on his face.

"It's probably 6 a.m., it's super early," Tillman said. "He walks by and he goes, 'Peanut, did you put this thing in my shower?' And as soon as he asked me, I was like, I need to lie. Should I lie? I need to lie."

"God dang it, Peanut, you went too far with your joke," Tillman recalled Rivera saying.

"I had literally a whole conversation in my head, like I need to lie and just not get in trouble," Tillman said. "Nope, I can't lie. I've got to tell the truth. He's my coach. I respect him. He's like my dad. I can't do it."

When he sheepishly confessed, he braced himself for a different reaction than the one he got when Rivera hugged him.

"He's like, get over here," Tillman laughed. "I thought I was going to get cut. Cause he sounded like a really mad dad, and I was like, dang it, I went too far with another prank.

"But he comes over and said, 'Damn, that thing looked so real, that was amazing.' And he had the biggest smile on his face; he looked like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" when he got his BB gun. I mean, he laughed, and he showed everybody. It was hilarious."

The glee was genuine, even a decade later. When Rivera recounts the story, he pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through his pictures with one finger, going back through 10 years of memories in his iPhone to find the evidence.

"Hold on, you've got to see this," he laughed. "Give me a second, this is worth it."

And it was.

And having spent that kind of money on a fake alligator, Tillman wasn't going to let it be a single-use prop. So he gathered it and took it to the defensive backs room, and waited for cornerback Josh Norman to come in later.

The reaction was similar because no one expects an alligator in their meeting room, especially in Charlotte and especially in the winter.

But it was that kind of locker room. Maybe he should have.

As Rivera and so many others recalled, the humor was equal opportunity, and no one was off-limits.

That meant plus-size fullback Mike Tolbert might walk into the meeting room one day dressed like general manager Dave Gettleman.

"He pulled his pants all the way up, and then he walked around and says, 'I need me some hog mollies,'" Rivera laughed. "Oh my God, it was, it was hilarious."

So when Halloween rolled around, there were other targets for locker room masquerading.

As you might recall, quarterback Cam Newton had a distinctive and individual style. He was, and remains, one of a kind. And because he was in the middle of an MVP season, you'd think he might be above it all.

Not in that locker room.

"If there was one guy who could diss Cam, it was Luke," Rivera laughed.

Kuechly was great at football, but no one expected him to be the jester like Tillman was. And because of his gravity, no one expected him to be the one playing the jokes. Which made it funnier when he did.

So when the defensive player of the year walked in dressed like the MVP, that got everyone's attention.

"I mean, he had it down," Olsen said. "He had the CN1 gear, the tights, the really short, short shorts, the beanie, the headphones, the towel around his head like he would do on the sideline. That was fun."

In many situations, players might not feel emboldened to mess with the star quarterback. But when it's a star of equal magnitude, that changes things.

But in 2015, it could have been anybody, it seems, and no one would have minded.

"The thing about Cam was, you can mess with Cam," Olsen said. "In all those ways, he was very much one of the guys. It wasn't like, OK, Cam's off limits, he was in on the fun and in on all the jokes as much as anybody, right?

That kind of egalitarian spirit went through the whole locker room, and when you had that many big personalities and big stars, no one was off limits. For every long-time Panthers star like Thomas Davis and Charles Johnson and Newton and Kuechly and Ryan Kalil, there were newcomers like Tillman and Allen and Roman Harper and Kurt Coleman, all coming together like they had known each other for years.

"When you've got guys that all believe in each other, that could keep each other in check, that just kept everything light," Rivera said. "That was the biggest thing, because it wasn't just Cam and Luke, there's TD, Kalil, Charles, Jonathan Stewart, and then you bring in Peanut and Jared, there's just personalities everywhere you looked.

"But they were personalities that fit our team."

Rivera has a tendency to be buttoned up. Again, he had a military background, and that's his default setting. But with so many guys having so much fun, he knew that playing along was the right call.

"I can remember having a conversation with our guys about certain things, and some of the guys kind of came to me and said, coach, you know that's kind of restrictive on who we are. I said, you know, you guys are right. I'll tell you what, you can keep your personality, but do it within our culture, within our core values, then be who you are. But remember the team, don't do anything that's going to hurt the team, and these guys bought into that, and they kept their personalities.

"They did the things that they, you know, that they normally did the way they did them, and I think that's one of the things that really stood out for these guys was they kept their personality and they were who they were."

That came through in a lot of ways.

For the guys comfortable in front of cameras, that meant Flex Fridays (a tradition which lasted for years), when the weight room would fill with testosterone, and guys would pose for cameras and show off their physiques.

For the more modest, it would be Fellowship Fridays, when they'd gather in the cafeteria and eat Bojangles after practice, and catch up with an always-growing cast of people.

In both settings, the practice squad guys were right there posing next to Cam Newton, or an operations assistant, video staffer, or equipment guy would be having lunch and socializing with the team's biggest stars.

"I give a lot of credit to Greg on that because that's kind of Greg's personality, we're not going to do things separately," Jansen said. "So we had Greg Olsen, who is an includer, Roman Harper is an includer, Cam is an includer. So I think that's what you saw on Flex Friday or Fellowship Friday. Cam had Taco Thursday in the quarterback room. I was always invited into the offensive line room.

"We had a bunch of includers, so there weren't divisions because no multi-million dollar starting player said, no, no, no, you're not invited. You're always invited, and that was cool."

That atmosphere allowed them to bring in people like Tillman, who brought a career's worth of jokes with him. That allowed Allen, one of the biggest showmen the game has ever known, to walk in with his cowboy hat in his hand, saying, "I just wanted to be a part of Luke Kuechly's defense." (It should be noted that Kuechly "just wanted to be Jared Allen's buddy," and delighted in sitting around as the veteran defensive end drank coffee and told stories.)

Tillman was early in his stay when Gettleman called him back in on a Monday, three weeks into the season. The veteran corner was afraid he was getting cut because he had that paranoia. But Gettleman wanted his opinion about trading for Allen, and whether he'd be a fit.

"That was literally the first thing he said, he goes, what kind of locker room guy is he?" Tillman recalled. "And when Jared came, he fit right in. He didn't have to be the missing piece of the puzzle; he just added more value to the puzzle. Like, I'm telling you, we didn't have not one bad teammate on that team.

"We didn't have any cliques. Everybody was cool with everybody, and it was just, it was like this chemistry, this brotherly love feeling that everybody had for one another. And I really got the sense that Luke Kuechly wanted to win games for me. I wanted to win games for Thomas Davis. Thomas Davis wanted to win games for Roman Harper. Like each person wanted to win it for the next person, it wasn't so much for ourselves. And that's kind of, that's the feeling that I got, all 53 men and what coach Rivera was selling, was that we all believed that we could beat any team."

And they did, all season long, except for that one game.

And with every win, that feeling began to create its own momentum.

It started out simply. After one of the touchdowns they scored that year (there were plenty), Cam Newton gathered those closest to him to celebrate on the sidelines.

Running back Jonathan Stewart was there, as well as wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery and fullback Mike Tolbert.

"In Cam's way, it often is, it starts small and it grows to the size and proportions," Jansen said.

As the season went on, those celebrations grew with every touchdown, every win.

And more and more people joined the party. By the time of the classic sideline pose, while they were routing the Cardinals in the NFC Championship Game, it seemed like everyone on the roster was there.

Well, almost everyone.

Because they were usually celebrating a touchdown being scored, that meant the small matter of an extra point being kicked. And you can't kick an extra point without someone snapping the ball.

So for all those pictures, the one face you never see is the long snapper's.

"I never got involved in one," Jansen said with a shake of his head and a frown.

Did that hurt your feelings, JJ?

"It did hurt my feelings," Jansen admitted a decade later. "In hindsight, after the game, I think I was definitely sensitive, kind of like everyone was hanging out without me, for sure. I don't know that it ever occurred to me during the season that I'd never get in one.

"I think deep down you're sort of hoping that you're part of a team photo at the end of winning the Super Bowl, but it probably hit me, somewhere around the Cardinals game, that I might not ever get one just by the nature of how these things go for sure, and that's a drag. We've all made the joke that a couple of people felt left out."

Of course, Jansen was included in so many other ways.

During the team PIG tournaments, when a Nerf basketball hoop became the center of their universe, he was one of the top shooters. Defensive end Charles Johnson, whose post-2011 lockout contract earned him the nickname "Big Money," was not one of the better basketball players.

But it all had a way of coming together.

"Nobody won more money in PIG tournaments than Charles Johnson, because Charles would always bet on me and I won a lot," Jansen laughed. "I don't know that anyone won more money than Charles, and Charles was one of the worst players, but he won a lot of money. It was like a $20 buy-in, so if you won the whole thing, you won $640. Charles might have cleared $5,000, because he was gambling on me left and right."

Charles Johnson and JJ Jansen had very little in common besides the logo on the side of their helmets.

But in that space, they were inseparable, and that's part of the magic of that team.

"I think teams that are able to bond well early give themselves a better chance to win late," Jansen said. "Because I think you have a stronger identity in team and less in self. And I think if a group of guys likes each other, your levels of communication go up. Your willingness to put your body on the line for your teammates goes up. When you feel like they're your friends, and we use the term family and brotherhood and all that. We probably throw that around way too loosely in football. But when you have a locker room that likes each other and a group that gets to be together for a long time, you do feel like you're family, and I think that does provide for some success because we were a family.

"And it wasn't just because we were winning. That core got to stay together prior to that, we had a good year in 2013, a losing season in '14 but we won the division. And yet that core got to stay together for a long time, and I think there was value in sort of growing through some of the pain. And it was a fun bunch of people."

There's that word again.

Fun keeps coming up in the discussions about that team, whether it's the reaction in the locker room, on the practice field, or in the stands and throughout the city of Charlotte and the Carolinas as a whole.

"There's really nothing special to it besides the fact that we made it fun," Stewart said. "Having Cam as our leader on offense, that was the key contributor to that fun, how he went about his business, his professionalism. Cam played the game his way. I think that was something that the entire league wasn't ready for. But eventually, the entire league embraced it.

"Since fun's been used already, I would say trailblazer or trailblazing. The way we went about our celebrations, third quarter, fourth quarter, you know, taking pictures on the sideline. But also the moments in between and the practices. Posing for cameras, creating memories, creating moments, that was something that wasn't necessarily leaned in on until that season for the Carolina Panthers, and we embraced that."

Stewart bridged two of the most successful generations of the Panthers. He was the first-round pick in 2008, just in time for a 12-4 regular season that disintegrated in the first round of the playoffs. That was followed by a slow descent, with the 2-14 final year of the John Fox era, followed by the hiring of Rivera, the drafting of Newton, and the gradual climb.

So, having seen every way a season could go, he was drinking that season in.

And several of the players he survived that 2010 season and the change of administrations with were still around in 2015, so it was especially sweet. Having guys like Tillman and Allen, Harper and Coleman join the effort was evidence that what they were building was working.

"Over time, you have losing seasons, you have the winning seasons, and I just think this was the perfect moment, the perfect season for all these things to kind of leak out of what we were already doing in practice in meeting rooms, bus rides, airplane rides, eating lunch together, whatever," Stewart said. "It was just an opportunity for us to really showcase our personality a little bit more because we're winning.

"When you're losing games, you're not, you know, celebrating anything. It's not fun playing football and losing games, but when you start the season off 6-0, that's pretty fun, you know? So, I think that team, everybody had a presence about them. They understood that this was a special team, a special season. I think that was just a special, special time where, to the public, it was new, but for us it was something that was in our DNA."

During those years, Stewart lived in a condo near work, so the immediacy of what was happening at Bank of America Stadium was inescapable. And every time he went to work, he realized what the city was experiencing.

"I lived right downtown, so every home game I would go to the elevator and look out of the window where I have a perfect view of the stadium," he said. "and I'm able to just take in the experience that a lot of people are having and hopefully coming away with a win, so that way everybody can go on about their their their lives in a way that is meaningful and impactful for the week. Sunday games, Monday games, and then the rest of the week, being able to have this positive energy to finish throughout the week.

"And I think when you talk about Charlotte, and you roll up on some fans that have experienced 2015, the phrase, 'What a time to be alive.' That comes up a lot. But people say that a lot because it was a time to be alive.

"It made you feel alive."

And for the Panthers that season, that was every day.

Because it was so much fun, it never really felt like work.