CHARLOTTE — For the last two years and change, the Carolina Panthers have built steadily.

After inheriting a two-win team, and then improving to five and then eight and a playoff berth, you'd be tempted to think this would be the year for stability, status quo even, keeping things level and staying on this track, because it's working.

But for head coach Dave Canales, general manager Dan Morgan, and executive vice president of football operations Brandt Tilis, it's been the opposite.

The roster they'll take to training camp only vaguely resembles the one they started with in 2024. The coaching staff got a good shuffle. And the work to upgrade the roster continued right up to the eve of camp.

When Morgan thinks about the work that's happened as he and Canales head into their third season, he credits their willingness to continue evolving and growing.

"I think that's what good leaders do," Morgan said of Canales and their shared mentality. "You've got to make hard decisions, and sometimes it's not comfortable, and whether it's moving on from a coach and replacing him with somebody else, that's where I've just really seen him take the next step to where he's always going to do what's best for the team.

"And that's all our philosophies around here. We're always going to do what's best for the team and put your ego to the side and put your feelings to the side and say, 'Is this what's best for the Carolina Panthers?'"

The biggest philosophical shift was by Canales himself.

He got this job because of his ability as a play-caller on offense, while building a reputation as a quarterback whisperer. But early this offseason, he passed that responsibility to offensive coordinator Brad Idzik.

For Canales, it represented a chance to continue to invest more in those he trusts, as well as to take a more managerial role over the entire game-day process. He's talked about being more engaged with clock management, strategy, and generally leading without the deadline pressure of getting the next play sent in to quarterback Bryce Young.

He also swapped out his senior assistants, bringing in associate head coach Darrell Bevell and senior offensive consultant Carl "Tater" Smith for original staffers Dom Capers and Jim Caldwell. Bevell and Smith worked with him on Pete Carroll's Seattle staff, so it was a chance to build on a common language.

"For all that I may have in my brain or in my notes or in my cut-ups, they'll remember things I didn't remember about how we came to certain parts of our scheme from an offensive standpoint," Canales said. "So that to me was an opportunity to build that out. The opportunity to allow Brad to be fully focused and locked in on the offensive play-calling side, while I'm still involved, while I'm still having conversations, and we're all there to really support him. And Darrell's been a play-caller for years, able to give Brad his two cents. And I wish I would have had Darrell my first year in Tampa calling plays and to have that kind of cover.

"It's the coaching staff, it's the scheme, it's the meeting schedules, how do we do different things? For me, it's like this pursuit of constant growth, how can we make it better? And what are those things that lead to success? What are the core principles that lead to creating a great team? And I get to lean on the experience that I had with Pete for 14 years. Keeping those principles consistent, while we can tweak how we do the different things, and some, and for some stuff it's just to freshen it up for the guys. How can I change up what we're doing a little bit to make sure that the guys that have been here are engaged in our process and enjoy it?"

Idzik's familiarity with all that (he followed Canales from Seattle to Tampa before coming here) means the offense will have familiar themes. But those tweaks are the point of this offseason, and not something to be considered lightly.

Capers and Caldwell were brought in to lend the counsel of experienced head coaches to a first-time head coach, but as he grew, Canales' making that switch wasn't an easy move. As Morgan noted, the easy thing to do would have been to leave a successful staff alone. But this evolution is part of who they want to be, and who they've been so far.

"He doesn't have the ego," Morgan said. "He gave up offensive play calling, but he also knows that our team's going to be stronger because of what he's going to be able to bring away from the play calling and just communicating with everybody in between plays, understanding situations where we're at in the game, giving advice to the defense, the offense, and special teams.

"Now he's going to be able to touch so many other areas."

And reaching out throughout the building has been one of his strengths from Day 1. Morgan talks about Canales' ability to communicate, and to take something from every interaction.

"When you settle into that role, he's just calm, and he's got everything under control," the GM said. "He knows what he wants, he knows the type of leader he is. He knows his strengths.

"So I would just say he's carrying himself around the building, like he's the head coach, and you know that. Just the way that he walks around the hallways and carries himself and communicates not only with Brandt and me but just with the building. He's a great connector of people in the building."

Most of these people know Canales well. A lot of the support staff has been with him throughout, including vice president of football operations Jeff Brown. But they brought in vice president of player health and performance Denny Kellington prior to last season, along with director of performance Josh Hingst.

So as Canales met with those three throughout the offseason, he referred to "tweaking" practice routines and best practices, rather than overhauling them (the same word he used for the playbook). That extends to the offense that he passed off to Idzik, as they're building in layers rather than writing a new book.

"The more time we've spent with this group, the more we kind of know these are our babies, this is our core, and these other things are complements to what we're doing in our core," Canales said. "That's been really helpful to know Bryce, to know what he does well, to know, what pressures and coverages that we can lean on with our group, with our guys, with defensive packages for situations, we've added a few players, so there's a little bit of R&D there with how do we get these, how do we get our best 11 on the field, who is that, and having to figure out those things?

"But I feel a lot more comfortable making those adjustments now. I think that they happen quicker. I have a lot of eyes, a lot of other coaches that are looking for the same things. A lot of those conversations happen more organically, and we can get to solutions quicker."

Part of that is Canales himself getting more comfortable in this role and growing into it. For a guy who spent more than a decade around Carroll, and certainly has a lot of his influence on this staff, he's learning how to step out on his own.

And that's a lesson he learned straight from his mentor.

"He said, 'Don't try to do things the way I did it,'" Canales said of a conversation he had with Carroll since coming here. "Just make sure that you emphasize the things that were important to me, if that's what you want to do, because these are the principles that have worked for me for years. Keep those established and then find your style, have fun with it, play with it, be curious about different ways to do things. And that was always his encouragement."

That lesson has been taken to heart across the building.

When Morgan and Canales took over, the roster obviously needed an overhaul, and they've given it one.

They again spent heavily in free agency this offseason, adding outside linebacker Jaelan Phillips to provide needed pass rush and linebacker Devin Lloyd to be the kind of signal-caller and tone-setter the Panthers defenses have always had (including when it was Morgan, who wore the same 55 jersey Lloyd will be wearing this week).

But they continue to want to build sustainably, with the hope that offensive tackle Monroe Freeling will be a long-term piece after wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan showed he was one a year ago, when he won offensive rookie of the year honors.

But they've also turned this roster upside down and given it a good shake.

Of the 91 players on the current roster, only 23 of them were here when training camp opened in 2024. Those guys, mostly draft picks (14), are the survivors, along with that first wave of free agents, which included guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis, wide receiver David Moore, and safety Nick Scott.

The team needed to look different, and Morgan has made it that way, continuing to tweak (to steal Canales' word) right up to the start of camp. By bringing back Brady Christensen last week, they added another key depth piece to extend Morgan's goal for this year.

"In terms of the roster building, going into like training camp, we're trying to make the back end of our roster as good as it can get," Morgan said. "Whether it's adding guys off the waiver wire, it could even be trades during training camp, if we identify a guy that could fit a position of need.

"I don't know if the building part of it's different, but I think that we're just always looking for ways to make the roster more competitive and stronger."

It's getting there, as recent moves have required more thinking about the flip side than in the past.

"I think looking at the board now, I think it's a lot harder to cut our team now than it was when I first took over," Morgan said. "When I first took over, I felt like we could look at the board and there were guys that you could switch in and out and you'd be fine. But now you look at the board, and you're like, OK, like we're starting to gain that depth on our roster.

"We're starting to kind of fill some holes, not just with players, but with elite-type players."

Making those changes has been a job that's required a lot of hours. But when Morgan wakes up early in the morning (usually around 4:30 a.m.), he's thinking about it, dashing off emails to the performance staff about new equipment or techniques.

"I wake up super early, and morning time is my thinking time," he said. "So I'm sending emails with Denny and Josh, and we're talking about ways we can make our players healthier and just strategically during camp, keeping guys healthy and different things.

"It's been fun, and obviously it's really challenging just in terms of I'm in charge of so many people in this building now, but it's also, I wake up, there's not a morning that I wake up that I'm not excited to do what I do. So, I'm having fun. Again, every morning, I'm excited to try to find a new way to improve the team."

Morgan senses that enthusiasm throughout the building. They're moving in the direction they want to go, and steadily. But not so steadily that they settle into ruts.

"I feel like we're all getting better every year," he said. "We're all learning every year, and I think everybody around here, the reason that I feel like we're headed in the right direction is everybody's curious.

"Everybody's trying to figure out ways to make us better, whether it's down in the training room. Whether it's strength and conditioning, nutrition, scouting processes, or coaches' processes.

"For all that type of stuff, I think everybody's just really curious and looking for ways to get better."