CHARLOTTE — Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero only spent one year in Green Bay, and it was memorable for him in many ways.

Growing up in Southern California, he wasn't prepared for the weather — or for hearing gunshots and seeing hunters haul deer out of the woods.

But mostly, it was his first encounter with a man who would change the trajectory of his career.

Evero got a job with the Packers in 2016 as Dom Capers' defensive quality control coach, when Capers was the defensive coordinator there. He had worked with legendary defensive coaches, including Monte Kiffin in Tampa Bay and longtime Capers associate Vic Fangio in San Francisco, but said he learned at a new level working with Capers in Green Bay.

"Talk about a PhD in football right there," Evero said, citing Capers' famous level of detail.

(Capers kept his daily notebooks throughout his career, and only parted ways with his notes from his time as the original Panthers head coach in 1995 when he was in Green Bay, 20 years later.)

"He's just meticulously organized," Evero said. "And maybe it's partly his experience level, but it's also I just think just who the human is. There's nothing that will ever catch him off guard, and so, like anything you could possibly think of from an organizational standpoint, from a detail, from a schematic, he's on top of it. And so really, being around him really raises your level of how intentional and how detailed you need to be. So from that standpoint, great, great experience.

"And you know Dom has got such a great way about him. He will never, he doesn't raise his voice really. He's just not going to yell and scream and do all that stuff, but you're certainly going to know when you don't do a good enough job."

When Evero became a defensive coordinator in Denver in 2022, he brought Capers along as an assistant, and brought him back home to Carolina when he came here in 2023, to add a layer of experience and accountability.

Evero recalled one time when he created a PowerPoint presentation for the defense that included several mistakes, and Capers immediately followed up.

"One week I somehow screwed up a couple of things, and afterward he pulled me aside and was like, 'Hey, that's not acceptable; we're gonna have to do a little bit better than that,'" Evero recalled. "And I'm like, 'Yes, sir, it will not happen again.' And so it did not. So, to your point, it's just like just the level of detail that he commands is pretty impressive."

Panthers offense preparing for "handsy" corners

Brad Idzik wants to make sure Tetairoa McMillan is more than prepared for Sunday. So when the Panthers are on the practice field this week, the offensive coordinator is giving the scout team corners very specific instructions: drive him crazy.

"You go and talk to the scout team players this week and say, 'Hey, if we're in man coverage and you're in press, I don't want soft pedal. I want you to get into his grill and challenge us to throw a flag,'" said Idzik on Thursday.

The directive comes as McMillan and the Panthers' receivers prepare to take on the Packers this weekend, and defensive backs who play incredibly handsy, particularly corner Keisean Nixon and safety Xavier McKinney.

"I mean, they're tough dudes," acknowledged McMillan this week. "You know that's the point of the game. We play a physical game, and it's going to get physical out there, and it's going to be a great game come Sunday for sure."

To prepare for the great game on Sunday, Idzik is giving the scout team that directive to be as tenacious as possible this week.

"These (Packers DBs) guys are very handsy," said Idzik. "They like to play hands-on, especially when they're in man coverage. They like to squat in zones and make you run through them. So we have to work edges, and (wide receivers coach) Rob Moore does a great job of making sure that that physicality is captured throughout practice."

But McMillan was also baptized by fire early in his first rookie offseason by facing Jaycee Horn and Mike Jackson in practice. The Panthers wanted him to face the toughest possible defense during the offseason so that he could learn to be as physical as possible on the field.

"We always preach to our guys when we're running the ball, you can either work a release versus man, or you can start to play the physical game with him," Idzik explained. "You always want to be the aggressor. We always talk about attacking in nature is what we want our offense to feel like. That includes being on the perimeter in the pass game.

"TMac, I think we talked about him early in the spring, right, when he was going against Jaycee and Mike early on, like learning the physicality of the NFL.

"We need to play as if we're the attacker, we're the aggressor on offense, even though those guys are going to play handsy and up in your face."

Rushed field goal product of rare circumstance

Tracy Smith has been coaching special teams in the NFL for 17 seasons. He's coached veterans, rookies, in all kinds of weather, seasons that ended in the regular calendar and those that went into the playoffs.

And in all that time, he's never been in a situation like he was Sunday against the Bills in the rushed field goal at the end of the first half.

"It's a pretty rare situation," Smith admitted this week, recapping the play. "Average kicker's career, they get zero of those kind of thing. That's 17 years for me. I never had one in the NFL."

The rushed field goal came as the clock ticked down in the second quarter of the Week 8 match up against Buffalo.

On a third-and-goal from the Buffalo 4-yard line with 0:17 to play in the half, Andy Dalton was sacked. The Panthers had no timeouts, so with the clock ticking after the sack, the field goal unit had to rush out and get set before the clock ran out. Because of the circumstances, Smith shared, rookie kicker Ryan Fitzgerald also had to kick what's known as the quarterback ball (used for offensive drives) versus the K-ball, which is the special teams kicking ball, used for field goals and punts.

In the rush, the 32-yard field goal that would have made it 19-6, was no good.

The miss was tough, and something Smith and his specialist examined during the week. But given none of them had ever been in such an operation live in game before, the coach was pleased with how everything was carried out, giving his crew confidence they can make it work should such a rare occurrence arise again.

"You have to be prepared because all the circumstances have to align for that," Smith explained. "It has to be third down, going to fourth down. It has to be in field goal range, and it has to be no timeouts for the offense and a running clock, all that stuff.

"So knowing that there's there were 17 seconds on the clock before the previous offensive play right there, we knew it was a possibility that we'd go out there. So we had the two guys, the specialists, of course, but also the two field goal players alerted on the sideline that, 'Hey, if the clock's running, we got to run.' The guys on the field are alerted in the same way, so they basically exchange spots. It's five for five kind of sub, and then you try to get it done.

"We snap that ball right in the tick between 0:01 and 0:00, and unfortunately couldn't make the kick. It's kind of a harried situation for everybody involved, the officials included trying to get the ball spotted and make sure everything's clear.

"Unfortunately we didn't get the one part of the execution done, but really, really nice job by the offensive players getting all the way off the field and the field goal team getting set up to have a chance."

After the play, veteran specialists, long snapper JJ Jansen and punter Sam Martin, stayed and conferred with the officials for a while. Smith said that is standard practice, as they knew to check if anything had been out of place on the defensive side in the rush. Because if there had been anything amiss with the Bills, such as too many men on the field, or a pre-snap penalty, the Panthers would have been awarded an untimed down and the ability to switch out the quarterback ball for a K-ball.

Nothing was wrong on the Bills side. But the same experience and wisdom that led Jansen and Martin to check is also the experience and wisdom the duo can use to help each other and, more importantly, the rookie Fitzgerald when "harried" situations such as Sunday's unfold.

"Any of us can have a bad play: Ryan, JJ, Sam, etc., myself, the whole thing," said Smith. "Those guys kind of lean on the background of their relationship. They spend the most time together of any three people in this building because their schedule matches and they don't have to go learn how to sack the quarterback or throw a pass, so they have extra time to just kind of grow as friends, so they check in with each other.

"If Sam has a punt that he's not happy with, the guys go check in with Sam, make sure he's all right, and hey, let's talk about the next one. Ryan's stuff is somewhat unique, especially if you miss an extra point, because he has the next play (kickoff) also.

"Both JJ and Sam, if they have a play that's off, they have recovery time to deal with that, Ryan has an extra point and then he's got to go to kickoff, so he talks to nobody besides me and possibly Danny O'Toole giving him the tee in between those two plays. He's just got to go back to business. And then afterwards there's a little debrief.

"But those guys, we had a meeting this morning, and then they have until practice time to, where they're kind of getting used to each other all this time, so they know how to deal with them just as friends and people."