CHARLOTTE — In those muted moments after a significant loss, some of the things that went well didn't get as much notice as they should have.

So when Panthers veteran guard Robert Hunt walked off the field with rookie right tackle Monroe Freeling, he had a simple message for him.

"He did well, he did well," Hunt said. "He's a rookie, and he came out here, and he played however many plays we had, and he battled, and he battled, and he battled.

"I told him, I'm proud of him."

In the aftermath of a 59-37 loss to the Bears, that was sufficient.

But as with most things for the first-round pick from Georgia, it was all part of a long process.

He arrived here as a guy who they thought might compete for a job at left tackle, but ended up starting on the other side after Taylor Moton was diagnosed with a blood clot before training camp. And once he got to camp, he got thrown into the deep end of the pool in joint practices with the Jaguars (Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker) and Texans (Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson).

Those weren't always fun days for Freeling, but Panthers head coach Dave Canales was relieved he got to experience them and came out as well as he could.

"That was the first thing that (offensive line coach) Joe Gilbert and I said coming out of it," Canales said Monday. "What a blessing it was to go against Jacksonville, and their two amazing humans on the edge, and then Houston right after that. And to give, you know, Monroe some exposure to what that could look like, and I mean he's coming off the field with big smiles, man. He enjoys playing the game, and that didn't mean he won all of them; it just meant he was enjoying the process of battling and figuring out ways to block different guys as they rotate in and give them different looks.

"But I was proud of the way he played (Sunday), and it was so difficult for me going into the locker room, knowing the result of what happened, and I didn't want to lose sight. And I made sure to go find all the rookies that played for the first time and just to remind them, like, hey, this is a long journey. I'm so proud to be a part of your first game. They won't all be like this, and let's keep going; let's keep pushing."

Freeling gave up a sack to Bears pass-rusher Montez Sweat (who had 10.0 sacks last year, and 58.0 in eight seasons), but had a solid day.

According to NextGen Stats, Freeling allowed three pressures and the sack in 41 pass-blocking snaps, with 29 of those one-on-one situations. And in a game that went the way it went, the Panthers weren't in the favorable phase of running that they'd prefer.

But to Canales' point, Freeling was able to manage a bit of a smile afterward.

"I'm just glad to be playing football," the rookie said. "It wasn't the result we wanted, but I'm just glad to be out there playing football."

And when he heard that Hunt, the mammoth guard next to him, was proud of him, Freeling's grin only grew.

"No, it's good to hear," he said. "I think it's a trust thing. So him being proud of me, and I think that we're going to go in the film room and see what we got to get better at, but it's going to be important to grow trust, especially going over the season.

"I think the thing about film is that it's never as good or as bad as you think, so we're going to get in the film room probably tonight, right after it gets uploaded, and we're going to see."

Freeling said he realized he was about to play in his first game when he was standing on the sidelines during the national anthem, and it just washed over him.

"All the nerves almost went away during the national anthem and everything was going on, and I was just taking it all in," he said. "I was like, 'Wow, I'm really here.' And then I was, you know what, it's just football when we get out there, so that's what I did. I just went to play football. . . .

"It wasn't our performance. I think it wasn't our football, and we can ask everybody on the team; they're going to say that. But really it's just the NFL, at least from my understanding, is that you know you've got 17 games. So you can dwell on the past, but you know we'd rather stay in the present and move on."

And the fact that they were able to move on and play offensively as well as they did without last year's starting tackles was a good sign. It wasn't everything. But to get that first one under Freeling's belt, it felt like enough for a day.