Then, out pops a leg from the bleachers.

From the front row, Jordan Trgovac, the Panthers' Mid-Atlantic area scout, quickly and quietly uses her toe to nudge his foot, lining up both feet into the proper form for the drill. There's no yelling, no condemnation, berating, or frustration. Just a simple nudge towards something that will help him better perform. A quick retreat, a nod to continue, and off he goes, running a clean drill thanks in part to the clean start.

"A lot of the scouts just yell at them, and I'm going to just show them what they're doing wrong because they don't understand, and then they get flustered and then they'll run bad."

There's an inherent responsibility each scout holds, Trgovac explains, to both the prospect and the NFL club for whom they work to make sure the full, truthful picture is being presented of a player. That means watching closely to assess every factor, such as why a guy might have vastly different numbers on separate runs of the same drill. That means, for example, popping a guy's foot up if need be to ensure a proper run for evaluation.

By week's end, Trgovac will have countless other moments, innocuous as they may seem at the time, that will help shape the coming weeks and months for hundreds of prospects and the Carolina Panthers.

UNC's pro day kicked off a gauntlet of workouts during the final week of March as college teams around the country help their draft-eligible players make a final impression on clubs (save the ones receiving 30 visits), and NFL teams rush to put finishing touches on reports of every possible player on their draft and UDFA board.

"I have eight more of these this week," Trgovac laughs, walking out of the Koman facility around 12:30 Monday afternoon, her backpack laden with college player booklets, clipboards, a Dewalt measuring wheel, countless measuring ropes, tape, and a veritable pitcher disguised as a water bottle sticking out the side, all weighing her down on the way to the parking deck.

The day had already started four hours prior with measurements, something Trgovac handles or assists with at most of the campuses throughout the week. It means early mornings for the self-proclaimed night owl—"something happens, and my brain just locks in at 9 p.m."—but in this race to the finish, aka the draft, those stolen chunks of time with prospects are just as valuable as any drill.

"If you're there doing hand, arm, and wing measurements, which we do before everyone starts, you know who's late or right on time, and you kind of get to talk to them a little bit more, which is nice; you can get a little bit more of an interaction with them."

That interaction is crucial.

Pro days are an important part of the draft process, but they are rarely the hinge that swings a team's opinion about a prospect, football-wise.

"You're chasing a lot of ghosts this time of year," Trgovac notes, cautioning against letting a broad jump or a shuttle drill change what she knows about a guy based on countless hours of tape.

"The tape is the tape," she explains, a philosophy that general manager Dan Morgan has placed at the center of the scouting department's evaluation standards. By the time she steps onto a campus for a pro day, at least four people have watched the film on a prospect: Jordan (or the area scout for that school), general manager Dan Morgan, and a couple of other people in the scouting department, such as director of college scouting Jared Kirksey, or a scouting assistant.

As a department, by March of a draft cycle, there is already a pretty clear understanding of who each guy is as a player. The spring is for crafting, "the picture of the person" beyond the field.

"My favorite part of scouting is scouting the person and the character stuff because I think, especially with technology now, the tape goes in so fast, and Dan (Morgan) is so good at it," she brags of her boss.

"I mean, he probably watches more tape than any GM in the league, the most I have been around. I mean, I've been around a lot with my dad (longtime NFL defensive coach, Mike Trgovac), but working for (Dan)—he's one of the most impressive GMs just in terms of how much tape evaluation and work he does on his end to really get to know the player.

"Obviously our job is to evaluate talent, but our job is—a lot of it is evaluating the player and making sure the player that we're bringing into our building is going to fit in with our culture and what we're, what we're trying to build.

"And I think that's where we have done a really good job these last couple of years of, with Dan and with coach and everybody, of developing a culture and a standard of what we want Panthers players to be, and trying to follow that as best as we can."

The pro days are the final piece of the puzzle that informs a team, confirming or answering questions that might have lingered from the tape (without negating it) and letting them know whether or not this is a person they want in the building. It means the area scouts, in addition to identifying each prospect's football traits, need to understand a guy's psychological traits.

So she puts a twist on the general interview questions and instead probes with "what do you love about playing linebacker specifically," or "what would your sibling say is their least favorite thing about you."

"You also want to just know, like Dan says, do you love football?"

The drive from UNC to Duke is a mere 20 minutes, but it's enough for Trgovac to catch her breath, as one does during a marathon, before the next leg. She takes her first big one after sliding into the driver's seat, a second before music blasts from the speakers at full volume.

"We listen to it loud in here," she jokes before turning it off. Luckily, this afternoon constitutes a short drive; no need to find ways to stay awake. Credentials from pro days and college games spill out of the passenger-side door, while an air freshener featuring her beloved dog Zuri swings from the rearview mirror.

"It's how I keep her with me on the road."

Now in her third year as an area scout with the Panthers, her car is her home for most of the year. "I'd have to check my Marriott account for the actual number," but she estimates the last calendar year saw her checking into hotels around 170 nights and staying with family in certain cities for another 15 or so.

Halfway to the Blue Devils stadium, a fender-bender unfolds in an intersection. It doesn't shake the unflappable road warrior.

"You see a lot of stuff on the road," she remarks, glancing to make sure both parties are unharmed before easing through the intersection and onto the interstate.

The one time she really experienced a scare was the fall of 2024 when Hurricane Helene was bearing down on western North Carolina.

"I had made it to Hickory and stayed the night in Hickory. Woke up. There's no power anywhere in the city," she recalls, still to this day not sure how her path home from Tennessee that—in hindsight—went through the storm, managed to keep her ahead of the worst of it.

"It was like that scene from Twister, it was chasing my car, and I was like, outrunning it," she exclaims. "It was just pure luck. But then from there I had to redo my fall because I couldn't drive to Tennessee for a while because there was no bridge or no highway."

An understandable problem for the Panthers' Mid-Atlantic scout.

For years, Carolina, along with almost every other NFL team, drew a line of demarcation along the border between North and South Carolina, jutting up to the Tennessee and Kentucky borders and over to the Mississippi River to identify their Northeast and Southeast areas on the scout map.

But not long after Trgovac joined the Panthers' scouting department, the front office in Charlotte elected to shuffle their borders and create a Mid-Atlantic area.

By 12:45 p.m. Monday afternoon, she's pulling into the side lot behind the Pascal Field House on the campus of Duke.

"Here to find some homegrown talent," asks the security guard waving her through the gate.

"We'll see," she quips.

There is still over an hour before the 20-plus prospects at Duke are scheduled to begin height and weight measurements, so Trgovac and the other 25 to 30 scouts head inside to the team meeting room. Jersey Mike's sandwiches are waiting at the top of the stairs so everyone can scarf down a quick lunch while juggling clipboards of notes, computers, and booklets provided by the school with prospect information.

Scouts from other teams pop over to Trgovac's seat or shout across the room, asking for clarification on certain testing numbers since she was the APT (Associated Professional Teams) scout at UNC. The NFS (National Football Scouting) works with colleges to plan workouts so as few as possible overlap. They also designate an APT scout for each location. This person is responsible for keeping the official numbers and entering them into a database shared with all 32 NFL teams.

The time is also a chance to catch up on reports.

These are the living documents that carry a scouting department from the first film session on a prospect through the scouting process, the draft, and even to rookie minicamp. They are the amalgamation of every testing result, RAS (Relative Athletic Scores), notes from watching games live and on tape, combine takeaways, and psychological profiles.

Writing them can be tedious, but once a team gets into Day 3 and UDFA prospects in late April, these reports are a lifeline. A skilled communicator can convince an entire department, one way or another, about a prospect with a well-crafted report.

"She's really good at dissecting people," brags her dad, Mike Trgovac.

He spent 25 years coaching in the NFL, including as the Panthers' defensive line coach and defensive coordinator from 2002-2008.

"She has opinions on people, and I said, hm, you know, I didn't see it that way, and she's really good at that, and her writing skills are just off the charts. That was one of the problems I always had was, I was a ball coach. I wasn't a writer. When I had to write a report, hell, it took longer to write the report than to evaluate the guy.

"She's just really skilled at that."

Added Morgan, "She's definitely very well-rounded to where she's really good, obviously, she's very smart, and she writes really thorough reports…it definitely is (a strength)."

Before long, the Blue Devils' prospects filter into the meeting room, stating their names, positions, and which drills they'll be participating in that afternoon. These are the days relationships pay dividends. Visits to the school over the years mean Trgovac knows the strength coach well, and his insight into someone's practice habits can shape a report.

Then it's out to the practice facility where drills run for the next four hours.

"The people are great at Duke, and it's a fun visit."

The sun is setting by the time Trgovac and the other scouts mosey to their cars Monday evening. But the day isn't over yet. Most are traveling the hour and 40 minutes to Greenville that evening to be in place for the 8 a.m. start at East Carolina University on Tuesday morning.

This part of the month is a grind, but the payoff of the draft is so close, glimmering just over the edge of four weeks out. So they grab some caffeine, pump up the music in the car, and head east.

Trgovac admits she fought this life for a while.

Not because of the work or any sort of lack of love for the sport, but simply because it had been her entire life for so long that the idea of the unknown was enticing.

She was six months old when her father took his first job in the league, moving from Notre Dame to the Philadelphia Eagles. Most of her childhood and adolescence were spent roaming the halls of stadiums, spending as much time as possible with her dad and sharing lunch with future Hall of Famers like Sam Mills and Julius Peppers as her dad coached her future boss.

While Morgan was focused on his playing career at the time, he remembers seeing her around the building and noticing a confidence even then that has carried her to success in this role.

"She was definitely very confident in who she is," he remarks. "She's not ever going to take a backseat or sway from an opinion because the room maybe is not going with what she's saying."

In 2009, after seven years in Charlotte, Mike Trgovac was hired by the Green Bay Packers. He and his wife, Angela, told the then-teenage Jordan it was time to find a job.

"So my job that I could do and work the least was to work game days with the PR department in the press box," she laughs. "So I did that when my dad was with the Packers."

It was her first introduction to the business side of the sport and game days. But still, there was a desire to just try something different. So she enrolled at College of Charleston and played softball there. For four years, for the first time ever, her life revolved around something other than football.

"It was honestly, I was kind of happy that I was at a school that didn't have a football team, like we weren't Alabama, where everything centered around football," she admits. "It was kind of nice to get away from it for four years and kind of recharge."

But that time away also revealed something else. She missed it, and before long, the sport pulled her back.

An opportunity opened up with the Kansas City Chiefs in their PR department (via former Panthers PR staffer Ted Crews, who was here in the early 2000s), a door that led to five years in the office. While there, Chiefs general manager Brett Veach saw something in Trgovac that he knew would make a good scout. He tried to recruit her for the scouting department in Kansas City, but she was already on her way home to Charlotte to take a job with the Panthers PR team.

It wasn't long before the scouting team here noticed the same spark and natural instincts that would make a great scout. It validated something her dad and his coaching friends had said for years.

For years, her dad would come home and turn on tape for a player he was watching, or just when game planning. Often, Jordan would join him, pointing out things she noticed about how a guy was moving.

"I was like, ' Wow, you recognize that," remembers Mike. "It was really surprising to me. I always thought she'd be great at it."

Her dad's best friend, longtime Panthers' coach Dom Capers, was one of the first to really encourage her to switch to scouting.

"My dad and his friends had always said, 'You need to be on the football side. You need to be in coaching, you need to be in scouting, your brain just works more like that.'"

Now that two different scouting departments had asked her to join them, Trgovac took it as a sign.

"I am very much, life has a way of showing you, presenting you the opportunities that are available to you, and it's up to you to take them or not," she preaches. "And it was an opportunity that was presented to me twice and I was like, I can't not try this."

She spent a summer taking a crash course with Kirksey, watching hours of old tape and turning in mock reports, which he would then take a red pen to, sometimes filling pages with his notes, something she can laugh about now.

"I was a little scared because I've never scouted," she says of that time. "A lot of people do it in college; they are like recruiting people, and I mean, I've obviously been around football my whole life, but I've never evaluated football.

"(But) if Dan is probably one of the best evaluators I've been around, Kirksey is one of the best teachers I've ever been around, and just teaching and trying to help us grow."

The teaching, coupled with years of watching film with her dad growing, paid off. It isn't uncommon, Mike jokes, to come downstairs and find his daughter has commandeered his office.

"She's got my chair adjusted this way, my desk adjusted that way, her computer. I said, it's not even my office anymore," he remarks, attempting to sound gruff, but the pride in his daughter comes through too loud.

"Being a scout is a tough job. It takes time to evaluate a person properly. You could do it half-assed, but it takes, it takes time to do it properly, and she puts the time in."

It's impossible not to notice at each of these stops, even as the number of scouts fluctuates around a core group, that Trgovac is the only woman.

"When I first started doing this, people would say, 'Oh, what do you need?' They thought I was an intern," she says. "Until they know your face and they're used to you, it's just, not a lot of teams are used to seeing girls in that space."

To her point, according to the NFL league office, there are only 39 women in scouting and scouting-related positions across all 32 teams. Of those 39, only 10 (including Trgovac) are full-time area or pro scouts. The Panthers do employ another woman, Gabby Weinrich, as a scouting assistant.

"I am very, I would say very protective of just…our space within the Panthers and kind of who we bring in," she begins, impassioned and confident. "Gabby's great, and if we're going to bring in another female scout—I was the first one to do it in Carolina. Not to say that's important or anything, but I just don't ever want to hear from other scouts, 'Oh, that girl at the Panthers, what is she doing,' or it to get back to Dan, 'Oh, your girls are messing up,' or whatever.

"Because if you're on a field like we were today and there's 25 scouts, 32 scouts, and there's one female scout, if I do something wrong, it gets highlighted in everything."

There is a sense of responsibility that comes with being the first or the few in any role, particularly for a woman in a traditionally male-dominated space. Inherent prejudices, from both genders, even when unconsciously employed, can create discord at times.

The key is not to act as if they don't exist; that would be willfully ignorant. But instead to work within the differences, finding strengths in what each brings to the role. And in the case of Trgovac, understanding and protecting her space, ensuring it will be there for any others that follow.

"It's more of a sense of just knowing you have to work harder and you have to be even more perfect in what you do, to make sure that it's not being highlighted. You're already kind of at a disadvantage because you didn't play football…so you're already a little bit behind the eight ball in terms of that, where people just know things naturally from having played a sport.

"You don't ever want to give anybody a reason to not hire, if there's a team that doesn't have one, you don't want you to be the reason that maybe some other girl at another team doesn't get an opportunity because they'll say, oh that girl in Carolina, she can't do anything. Why would we want to bring that into our building?

"It's sports at the end of the day, no matter if you're a guy or a girl, you've got to have thick skin."

There is another sense of responsibility Trgovac feels is even greater, though: that of her family name.

Jordan Trgovac is in this job because she's good at it—thanks in part to growing up in the world—and valued for her impact. But she's not obtuse. She knows her last name carries weight and, therefore, expectations in these circles.

"It's always really important to me, especially when you have a last name like mine, to make the best impression that I can for him because his legacy in the league is really good and I don't want to do anything that would ever make that not the case.

"I feel more of that responsibility, especially now working for the same team that he was a coordinator at and took to a Super Bowl," she admits before pausing, trying to explain a legacy that is bigger than words, before nodding and saying simply, "It means a lot to me."

The elder Trgovac, upon hearing his daughter's words, has to stop for a second, slightly overwhelmed, before he chokes out, "Well, that's, that's the first I've heard that, and that's really, it's really touching," he says, emotion tinging his voice.

"Just tells me that her mother did a great job with her," he brags, then continues, "One thing that my father always told me when I was a younger guy was the only thing that you have is your last name and just to protect that at all costs and never disrespect your last name.

"To hear that it really, really makes my heart feel good because she's very conscious of all that stuff. She's a very bright girl, for one, but, she's very conscious of the family-oriented…and, that makes me feel good because I was in (the NFL) for a long time, so a lot of people know me and some of these head coaches, particularly guys going back to college and stuff, they know who I am and that makes me feel great.

"I'm really proud of her for that."

"You build these relationships with these guys because we're all looking after the same information," she says.

"You're never going to be good at this job if you don't have guys or people on other teams and that you trust and that you work well with and that you can say, 'I heard this,' and they'll say, 'Oh, I heard this.'"

Two: Remember that sometimes a guy is a guy for one team, but not the other. There's a balance to be struck between focusing on what works best for your team and bringing in the best information available from your area.

"There's nothing worse than a guy popping off in rookie minicamp somewhere else, and you have to explain why you didn't have him," she chuckles, albeit with a knowing groan.

Three, a reiteration of an earlier lesson: Don't go chasing ghosts. It applies to both the scout and the agent. Both need to know where their attention is best focused. She'd have one more agent conversation of the sort before the day is over, telling him honestly of his player, "he's an interesting kind of after the draft prospect."

"Sometimes, you get too excited 'Oh, this guy ran a 4.39.' Okay, well how does he look on tape," she explains later of the thought process. "Some guys are just athletically gifted; they're just better athletes than they are football players. OK, a guy runs really fast and he tests well. But he didn't play, so what is the issue?

"That's kind of where pro day testing comes in, we get to the end of the draft, we have four receivers we've signed in free agency. Why don't we bring in this guy that doesn't have ideal game production but he ran a 4.39 and he jumped well, so let's see what he can do for us.

"And sometimes it surprises you, and there might be a reason a guy isn't playing at a school that goes beyond talent, so the testing just gives you another metric."

Two players in Trgovac's area fit this bill last season, and both were guys she felt strongly enough about to bring to the table when it came time to sign undrafted free agents: Corey Thornton and Bam Martin-Scott.

Both made the 53-man roster. Thornton appeared in 12 games, even slotting in for Jaycee Horn in San Francisco, before a season-ending injury sidelined him. Martin-Scott appeared in all 17 games, contributing 54 snaps on defense and 272 snaps on special teams.

"It can be tough when you go through the work of the entire fall and spring process and don't have a player from your area drafted," she shares. "But when you get an opportunity to vouch for a guy after the draft in free agency and then they make the 53 and become a contributor, there's a sense of pride in that.

"Some guys just need an opportunity whether that comes in the form of a draft pick or a free agent."

It works both ways, though. There can be a prospect that checks every box on paper football-wise. The tape, the testing, everything can be there. But she has to trust her research and her gut, and be brave enough to tell the rest of the room no if his name comes up.

"I always tell them, you're the GM of your area," says Morgan of trusting his scouts in these situations. "To me, they should know their area better than anybody. So obviously, their opinions are really going to matter.

"They've seen them play, they've been in the school, they've seen them around the building practicing, so their opinions definitely are going to hold a lot of weight.

"(Jordan's) very confident and she's not afraid to stick to her opinion, but she's also not hardheaded to where, if maybe she was off a little bit with what she originally thought, she doesn't have the ego to where she's not going to be like, yeah, I kind of see that.

"I want all of our scouts to be like that."

Time has proven her evaluations right before, protecting her resume and, more importantly, the Panthers organization in the long run.

"You could have a guy that tests out of the water, but if his character isn't up to our character standard, then that's where we have to have the conversation on the risk factors and if it's worth it to bring that kind of person into our building because the people that build a team matter.

"Sometimes the best teams aren't just because they have the best players. It's because of who their leadership is and who they have in place, the building blocks of their team. I mean, Derrick Brown is an incredible football player, but he's also a really good person."

The sun is starting to dip behind the towering pines around Kidd Brewer Stadium on Wednesday afternoon. Trgovac is helping Vikings scout Steve Sabo tape down the measuring tape used for the broad jump before moving over to map out the 40-yard dash path. The two move quickly and easily, completing a dance they've perfected over the years at pro days just like this one.

"We'll just kind of get on the pro day circuit together, and he's just super helpful and an older guy that knows what he's doing," she says. "So when I've got questions or whatever, I ask him or the other ones that I know might have the answer.

"I always tell my friends, yeah, sometimes my best friends in the fall are 50-year-old men," she laughs.

Along with the other scouts still on hand, they move through the Mountaineer prospects efficiently, offering encouragement and tips before and during each drill, ensuring every guy puts his best foot forward and every scout is walking away with the most accurate information; all just numbers and notes on a sheet until it helps change a life and a franchise.

The longest leg of the pro day tour concludes when App State's workout is over, with only a handful remaining on the calendar, something Trgovac reminds Panthers scouting assistant Chris Smith of as they walk off the field in Boone.

"I'll see you tomorrow, 8:30 a.m.," she says, snickering at his grimace courtesy of the reminder that their Thursday will start early as well, back in Charlotte at UNCC.

In just a few short weeks, this traveling gypsy crew will disperse back to their respective clubs, meaning Jordan Trgovac will be back home in the Queen City, locked in a dark, windowless room to pore over the last of film cutups, every word on every report, and takeaways from final interviews.

But for a few more days, they get to be here, on the grass with the wind blowing, bags popping, and the future of everyone present still wide open.