LB Luke Kuechly: "You're excited for him because you got the opportunity to see how hard he worked every day with the defense and making sure we were prepared. He put us in position to be successful. Now he's got the opportunity that he's always wanted. He started from the bottom in Philadelphia and he's worked his way all the way up to a head coach. It's kind of cool to see him at the top where he's always wanted to be.

"He's going to know what we're doing in certain situations, but you can't read into that stuff too much. At the end of the day, you just have to go out there and do your job."

TE Greg Olsen: "They are going to be very sound, very well coached. Those are characteristics of McDermott's defense. Can't imagine it's going to be anything different than that up there. He's inheriting a defense with some good players. It's going to be a good challenge for us.

"I'm sure there are things that we know about what he likes to do just like there are some things that he knows about us. It's going to be who plays the best on the Bills and the Panthers, it's not going to what happened three years ago in training camp. It's not about who knows anybody's secrets. There is nothing going on out there that is earth-shattering. Everybody knows what each other does. It's just a matter of who executes."

S Kurt Coleman: "What Sean was able to do for this organization and this defense, he kind of helped put a blueprint up for what a great defense needed to be and the execution we needed to play with. We always talked about the D-line needing to be the tip of spear. If your D-line is getting great pressure and is able to stop the run like they did last week, it makes your job in the back four so much easier. I was with Sean his first year as a defensive coordinator in Philadelphia, so I've seen his growth as a coach. I'm nothing but excited for him, but he said, 'Whether I'm here or not here, this is the blueprint in which this Carolina Panthers defense needs to play.'"

DE Charles Johnson: "For McDermott to be here so many years and what he did for his defense over the last five or six years, it's tremendous. We love him. It's just going to be kind of awkward playing against him, but knowing McDermott he's going to have his guys fired up and ready to play us, and we've got to be ready to play him. It's going to be pretty cool."

Defensive Coordinator Steve Wilks: "We had an outstanding relationship. It was good working for him for five years. I felt like he trusted me in the things that we came up with from a game plan standpoint. He trusted the whole staff. In the National Football League, or any level, it's about the staff chemistry. You know you can trust guys to get that teaching done. The relationship was great and we're still close to this day."

Head coach Ron Rivera: "For the most part when it's an opportunity to take a big step like this, you don't want to hold anybody back. I went through it as a young coach coming up, and I was very fortunate to have Andy Reid, who was all about that, and I've tried to be that way as well. It is difficult because you don't want to train guys and have them leave for something that's just equivalent to it – that's not much of a step up – but in this type of situation I know it was Sean's ultimate for what he wanted to become. He worked very hard at it and did great job of coming from Philadelphia and having to change some of the things he did. He had a chance to rebuild the defense here. He was in a situation where he inherited the defense with the Eagles, but here he was able to put his stamp on it and did a very nice job."