GREEN BAY, Wis. — There were a handful of moments in Sunday's game in which the Carolina Panthers could have lost that football game.

Importantly, there were as many moments when they didn't.

The Panthers coming back for a 16-13 win over the Packers at Lambeau Field Sunday was instructive for a lot of reasons, but largely for the way they embodied one of the qualities Dave Canales stresses, and is beginning to see embodied in his team.

As excited as they were about the win, the game was not without its flaws. Rico Dowdle's 130 yards and two touchdowns were good, but his unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for his second celebration cost the Panthers a point when it forced them to try a kick from what long snapper JJ Jansen called an "unmakeable" distance.

Bryce Young made some sharp decisions. He also threw an odd interception into the end zone.

Within those two plays, there's a lesson Canales has been teaching.

"Yeah, they're resilient, and we're learning to trust and have confidence," Canales said. "At the same time, we'd like to do better. We've got to do better in those situations, especially in a tight game like this, you know, we put ourselves in a hard spot."

The Panthers are 5-4, and that's good. It's the deepest in a season they've been over .500 since 2019 (when they were 5-4 en route to 5-11). And yet, they're not in a position to give away points, not even a single one. If the Packers didn't miss a field goal, or if Panthers rookie Ryan Fitzgerald didn't hit a big one with one second left, they wouldn't be celebrating Sunday night.

That's why Canales continues to talk about process, about cleaning up details, about the work.

But as they learn those lessons and push through, they're also developing some confidence about themselves.

Young is one of the stoics in the room (but hardly the only one). He doesn't reveal much that he doesn't choose to, and can deliver profound words with a straight face. But Sunday night, he had a little bit of a vandal's grin when he talked about Fitzgerald hitting his second walk-off winner in a month.

"Rookie coming in, not scared of the moment, not afraid of the bright lights, that's the guy he is," Young said. "That wasn't something new learned today."

For Young to acknowledge that with a smile on his face says a lot, because this team is beginning to get (and enjoy) the kind of validation for the work that shows up in the standings. Again, being over .500 in November is a step in the direction they want to go. But they were never over .500 at all the last three seasons, so there are lessons they're learning on the fly.

And while Young wasn't statistically great, or even good (11-of-20, 102 yards and an interception, 48.3 passer rating), he was definitely timely. On the final possession of a blustery day, he converted a couple of first downs to Jalen Coker and Tetairoa McMillan (who came back from some drops), setting up Dowdle's 19-yard run that set up Fitzgerald's game-winner. In front of all that was an offensive line dealing with even more on-the-fly changes, including Jake Curhan playing both guard spots in the first quarter and finishing the game a month after he was signed off the Cardinals' practice squad, and somehow, it continues to work.

So listen to how Young described all those factors.

"I mean that that speaks to that room and the culture they have," he said of the offensive line.

"Rico being special like he always is, in a clutch moment like that," he said of Dowdle's late run. " We all trust on each other to execute, and you know it was, it was, it was great execution."

"He's always on to the next play," Young said of McMillan. "He always wants to do whatever's best for the team. He always wants to be there and step up in moments like this. So, having a guy like that, and really across the board, we have a bunch of guys that step up for the moment, want to be a part of that. Coach talks about that all the time. You know, in the moment, you don't change who you are. You resort to your training, and you resort to who can 'do right longer,' as coach says. Grateful to have a lot of guys that do that."

"Yeah, that's not easy at all," Young said of Curhan. "It's not like he's been here that long either. Someone who's coming in and trying to learn stuff, trying to get acclimated to the room, acclimated to the calls. Last week he stepped up, you know, and then this week came in to play left, then D-Lew comes back, and then play right and play a great game again versus a great front. I mean, that can't be talked about enough.

"I think that just really sums up the resilience of that room. I have so much respect for him."

And Young was a part of that, too.

As the Panthers learn to become a winning team, they have a quarterback who just completed his ninth career game-winning drive in the fourth quarter.

That's enough to smile about, at least until all the old souls in that locker room switch back into back-to-work mode and start talking about the next thing they have to do.

No matter how much it meant for this team to win a game in this place, they were already thinking about next week's date with the Saints back home.

"Obviously coming to a storied place, but for us it was just the next game, man," defensive captain Derrick Brown said of winning in Lambeau, which the Panthers hadn't done since 2008. "We've been preaching all week, man. We lost a tough one; we lost bad last week. We got our ass whooped.

"So to be able to come back out here and just get back into it, that's been a thing for us. We sat in there this week and we're like you've got to take that one on the chin and we've got to roll back, we've got to roll back into what we do."

There's a word for what Brown's describing. A word that describes a team that answers an ugly road loss at New England with a record-setting comeback win the following week, and a team that answers an ugly home loss to the Bills with one of the best road wins in years.

That word is resilient.