CHARLOTTE — Tetairoa McMillan sat in his locker, leaning against the back, eyes closed and face calm as the pre-game sounds from EverBank Stadium echoed through the tunnel on the other side of the door.

The No. 8 overall pick was just minutes away from his NFL debut as the Panthers' newest receiver for Bryce Young. But just as he'd been all week, McMillan seemed at peace. Where most would feel an overwhelming sense of nerves or excitement that could become consuming on its own, McMillan walked through the week with the same focused ease that has become his standard since arriving in Charlotte back in April; eyes looking forward, intensely committed to the day's work, with a relaxed temperament to balance it all out.

"Football is still football at the end of the day," said McMillan on Monday, reflecting on his first game at the professional level. "Obviously, you know the league is, everybody is good, you know, the game is faster, more physical, but try not to make it bigger than it actually was."

There was a lot that didn't go well for the Panthers on Sunday in a 26-10 loss to the Jaguars as the offense struggled to find cohesiveness. But a bright spot was McMillan, who finished with a game-high five receptions (on nine targets) for 68 yards in his first action.

He doesn't care.

"It wasn't good enough," the Arizona product stated. "That's all I can say. Yeah, I made some plays, but at the end of the day, I wanted to win, so I didn't do enough to make sure that happened."

In deference to his statement, let's start with the areas McMillan felt he could have performed better, namely, a possible touchdown at the end of the third quarter.

Young rainbowed a 33-yard pass to the end zone for his rookie receiver. McMillan reached his arm out, trying to bring in a signature one-handed catch. As he tried to bring it in, Jags' corner Tyson Campbell smothered his arm, forcing TMac to bobble the ball towards his body, but it fell harmlessly to the grass, with no score.

"That's just me," McMillan said, taking accountability for the incompletion despite the defense. "Opportunity came my way. I just got to go out there and make a play. Still a good ball, so I got to come down with it…I feel like that's a routine catch for me, so I feel like we, I've had better coverages with our guys in practice. So, like I said, that's something that I got to make, and next time the opportunity comes, I'm going to make it.

"I definitely could've got two hands on it. I just feel like I should've approached that better than I did. So like I said, man, I just got to make the play when the play comes to me, you know, and now I realize that, looking over today, I realized what I should have done better in that moment, and I'm going to capitalize on it and we'll go from there."

Another play, when the ball came out of Young's hand particularly quickly, McMillan was running an inside crosser. His head was still turned towards his route, away from the ball.

"I'll just get my head around quicker," promised McMillan. "Really, just always make sure I'm in the right spot when I'm supposed to be there. So, just being able to build trust with Bryce so that he can trust in me and anticipate throws like that. So just got to get my head around and catch the ball."

So, those are the plays McMillan wanted to focus on as to what he could have done differently to possibly help with a win. But there were others, and an overall performance that deserves acknowledging as well.

By game's end, as mentioned above, TMac had a game-high stat line with five receptions for 68 yards. Those numbers alone put him third on the Panthers' all-time list for a receiver's rookie debut, trailing only Muhsin Muhammad (96 yards) and Kelvin Benjamin (92). It was also the highest yardage total of all rookie receivers in the NFL this opening weekend.

Panning out to look at this performance relative to history also bodes well for McMillan.

Since 2015 (10 years, 11 drafts), there have been 14 wide receivers drafted with a Top 10 pick. That includes the two this past April, McMillan and Travis Hunter, who played both receiver and corner for the Jags on Sunday. Those picks in the Top 10 range from No. 2 overall (Hunter) to a couple of guys taken at No. 10 overall.

Three of those receivers—Kevin White (Chicago, 2015), John Ross (Bengals, 2017), and Mike Williams (Chargers, 2017)—did not play in their teams' Week 1 game of their rookie season due to injury, although Ross only played three games total his rookie season, primarily sitting out as a healthy scratch.

Three receivers had a group high of six receptions: Hunter, DeVonta Smith (Eagle, 2021), and Corey Davis (Titans, 2017). Four others are tied with McMillan with five receptions: Malik Nabers (Giants, 2024), Drake London (Falcons, 2022), Ja'Marr Chase (Bengals, 2021), and Amari Cooper (Raiders, 2015).

Only four of those 14 receivers finished with more yards than McMillan: London (74 yards), Chase (101 yards), Smith (71 yards), and Davis (69 yards).

*Kevin White missed his entire true rookie season with an injury.

Parenthetically, but perhaps notably, there were two catches that weren't added to McMillan's final box score: a 16-yarder down the sideline that was negated by a Panthers holding call on the offensive line, and a 22-yarder that also drew a defensive pass interference. The Panthers took the sure yardage with the DPI call, but McMillan knows it would've been six one way, half-a-dozen the other.

"If you ask me if I caught it, yeah, I caught that," he smiled.

If those two plays counted, McMillan would have finished with seven receptions for 106 yards, which would have been the best rookie debut for a Top 10 wide receiver going back to 2015.

Perhaps it's why, even when things weren't going great overall, the game looked easy at times for the rookie.

"I feel like this whole week, leading up to the game, the coaches did a good job of just explaining the coverages, the different coverages they run, and it's everything that we expected," shared McMillan.

"And I feel like I've been, I'm confident in my preparation that I've had these these last few months, and you know the DB corp on our team has been pushing me to make sure that I'm ready for anything I get thrown my way, so yeah I feel like that game was a lot easier than I expected."

Added Dave Canales, "I thought he played fast, I thought he looked very comfortable out there one-on-one outside. We moved him around a little bit, and he showed an ability to be able to handle that. He and Bryce were on the same page timing-wise, so I was really pleased with the way he played.

"I'd love for him to come up with a big touchdown in the end zone, shot down the field, but he ran a beautiful route on it, and he really gave us a chance to have some explosives down the field and to just have a consistent target."

Football is a team sport, though, and for every spot in the record book Tetairoa McMillan wrote himself in on Sunday, it's all for naught in his mind without a win. That's what will get his focus this week.

"I mean it's cool, but you know, at the end of the day, everybody on the team wants to win games, so whether it's doing that or—you know I feel like at the end of the day, I feel like I should have done more, I should've had that catch in the end zone, it was the fourth down play, so turnover on downs and you know at the end of day that's on me. I got to be able to make those types of plays when the plays come and eventually put six points on the board," said McMillan.

"The beautiful thing about it is we get to come in today and go over what we did wrong, what we did right, and we get to come in and correct, and we just get better as the days go on, so we just continue and get ready for Arizona coming up."