CHARLOTTE — Aaron Hall wasn't quite sure what he just heard. That wasn't because of volume; it was plenty loud. He had just never heard that particular combination of words put together in that order.

"You look like you're trying to hunt geese with a rake," defensive line coach Todd Wash barked.

But then his position coach explained it to him, explained it to all of them — loudly, with a laugh, and likely with a few profane adjectives — and it began making more sense.

In his early days here, going through drills alongside a Pro Bowler like Derrick Brown, or a veteran like Tershawn Wharton, the undrafted rookie quickly found out that if he came out of his stance too upright, if his pad level left him vulnerable, he was going to get called out. They all were. Because those little mistakes in May and June can be costly in November and December.

"There's a lot of things that he gets on me about, but at the end of the day, he's the same person to everybody in the building all the time, and that's something that you have to love: his consistency, right?" Hall said. "And I think it's something that makes him an amazing coach. You're always going to get the same Wash.

"I mean, we go into a meeting, and he addresses everybody the same. I mean, Derrick Brown is the best defensive tackle in our game right now, but at the end of the day, Derrick Brown comes in and sees the same coach that, that I see, Turk sees, and so it's just amazing just having that experience knowing at the end of the day you're going to get coached to the absolute maximum. You're going to come out here and be a better player for it."

And that's why those individual drills and the attention paid in every rep stood out to Hall, and stand out to all the defensive linemen who chew up the grass every spring, to be on better footing come the fall. They work hard, they get coached hard, and they can hear it.

"He's a very loud cat," Brown said, long before his position coach was put in charge of the whole defense. "Every single day, he's pushing us, pushing us. And that's what we need. He wants us to definitely be in shape and be able to play as many plays as you can. So at the end of the day, that helps all of us."

Now, Todd Wash is in a position to coach all of them, as the interim defensive coordinator following the firing of Ejiro Evero last week. It's admittedly an awkward position to be in, for all of them, really. But the thing they've come to appreciate about the 58-year-old coaching lifer is that he hasn't changed.

Nick Scott had deeper ties to the guys who just left than any player here, having played for Evero and Jonathan Cooley with the Rams. But the 31-year-old safety has also been in this business long enough that he knows these changes are inevitable. And he laughed when asked if he knew what hunting geese with rakes meant, because that's a foreign position and a foreign language to him. But he also appreciated the authenticity. "That's Wash," he said.

"It's a cool perspective to be in this position and get to know more about a guy that's been with us for a little while, but I get to see him on more of a personal level now," Scott said. "I mean, just from a human perspective, now I'm listening to a different person.

"I think it's not as difficult as everybody thinks, just because we experience it so much from a player-to-player standpoint. Like we're around guys that are here one day and gone the next all the time. Like, that's the nature of football. It's less prevalent with coaches, but it doesn't change the mentality of next-man-up, right? Like there's people coming in this building, it's a revolving door in every organization, day in and day out. So it's one of those situations where you appreciate the time you have with somebody, and when they're not here, you wish them the best, but you got a season to keep getting after it. So here we are."

In that respect, Wash is well-suited for this unusual role. As the guy who teaches the guys closest to the ball, his focus is narrow by definition. He laughed that this week, he's had to be conscious of the secondary in a new way, and resist the temptation to peek at just what the front is doing.

But being in this particular moment is the only thing the Panthers have after making a change seven weeks into a season. Panthers head coach Dave Canales said he appreciated the "energy" Wash brought to the meeting room and the field "after a pretty heavy weekend."

And it's that way for all of them. You don't change coaches in midseason if things are going great. So when all you have is the present, you pour everything you have into that moment.

"We're going to try to set a culture on defense," Wash said this week. "We are going to play fast, hard, and physical. If we make mistakes, we're going to do it a million miles an hour."

That is a very football-guy thing to say, but it's also the kind of thing that comes out of him naturally, because that's just what he is. He even looks and sounds the part, with the bald head and the beard, the Harley-Davidson tattoo, the gravelly growl as he's telling a rookie not to hunt birds with a lawn tool.

"Intense, just a football guy," linebacker Devin Lloyd said this week. "Everybody I know in Jacksonville and obviously here loves him as a person and as a coach and, same thing here, but yeah, definitely just a football guy.

"Which I love, detailed in what he's teaching us and everything, but just overall just, yeah, football guy."​

Longtime offensive line coach Harold Goodwin laughed a little when Wash's name came up this week, and that's a common reaction, because Wash's authenticity is endearing to other football guys. They talk ball, whether they're on the bench on the side of the practice field before things start, or out "having a cocktail or two from time to time." The conversation never strays too far from ball.

"I love Wash, man," Goodwin said. "Wash is all energy; he's going to hold those guys accountable. And you can see the juice that he brings to the field every day now that he's got that walkie-talkie in his hand, calling defense out. But Wash is about business. Wash is about execution, and I'm excited to see what happens. He's about the business of football; I'm excited to see what he can do as a coordinator. Just overall, as a person, awesome dude, awesome coach. I respect him a lot.

"But I know he knows ball. I know he loves ball, and you listen to him, he'll tell you he's all about ball."

And because ball matters so much to him, and because he knows ball well enough to know that interim anythings don't often have long shelf lives in the NFL, it means something.

Wash got a little choked up during his first press conference, as he thought back to his roots in small-town North Dakota, knowing he beat long odds to get to this point by being a football guy — who played until his body gave up on him, leaving coaching as his path that would take him from small-town North Dakota to the NFL.

"I'm passionate about the game; it's done a lot for my family," he said, needing a pause to collect himself. "And it's because I've had great players. It's just, the game's everything to me. I know nothing else. So, that's basically who I am. I expect certain things, getting off the emotional side here. I expect certain things, and we're going to play that way, one way or another. And I think the players know how I feel about the game. We have a lot of guys in our locker room that feel the exact same way on both sides of the ball and special teams. It's a great game. And you've got to take advantage of the time that you're in it.

"I expect us to play fundamentally sound. I'm not a guy that believes you fix stuff with a call. You fix it with fundamentals, and you fix it with effort, cause there, there's going to be screw-ups. If I'm not mistaken, I think all other 31 teams in the league get paid. So, there's going to be some things that don't go right, but I think you can fix it with effort and physicality. And that's what I expect to see. They noticed it the first day of practice when we were out there. We are going to play with a certain brand of football. And, it's, it's just what I believe in, and that's what our assistants believe in, that's what our players tell me they believe in, and we're going to see if they do."

But no matter what, they're going to hear it. Especially if they're trying to hunt geese with a rake.