CHARLOTTE — The Panthers were purposeful about building depth along the offensive line the last two offseasons.

(After using seven different left guards and eight different right guards in 2023, that seems appropriate.)

And now, two weeks into training camp, they're getting a look at a lot of it.

A day after head coach Dave Canales declared the center competition over with Austin Corbett edging Cade Mays, Mays was back with the ones on Tuesday.

Of course, he was there at left guard, since Damien Lewis remains out with a shoulder injury. Ja'Tyre Carter started for Lewis in the preseason opener last week, but the natural rhythms of training camp are allowing them to look at a lot of options already.

"It's honestly, like you love having D-Lew out there, you love having your five working together, working through communication," offensive coordinator Brad Idzik said. "But it's also a blessing in that way to see, OK, who do we have waiting in the wings, like who's working well next to Austin, next to Cade? Who's echoing out the calls to the tackles?

"So working with those guys and just cycling them through, we're already doing that with D-Lew, and with Robert Hunt, taking care of those guys because they take a lot of reps for us during the season. But just trying to get those guys' experience with the first group, and going against a really good aggressive defensive line."

Idzik paused for effect at that moment, saying, "Derrick Brown is back."

"He's very much back, and he shows up at practice, and that makes all of our guys better," he continued. "So what better test to put a potential backup to D-Lew, and then he has to go against Derrick Brown and Bobby Brown III and Turk (Tershawn Wharton) and all those guys in the interior that are just going full tilt all practice."

(That defensive line got the same kind of attention this offseason, for similar reasons. And that's paying off on both sides of the ball.)

The Panthers did have Hunt back on the field Tuesday, after he left Monday's practice briefly to get his ankle taped.

Veteran and rookie receivers bookend the day

Stop us if you've heard this before, but Jimmy Horn Jr. made another impressive play in training camp practice on Tuesday. The rookie was running with the twos—or as Andy Dalton has taken to calling the group, "The Next Guys"—in a 7-on-7 period. The rookie used his speed off the line to open up space downfield. Corner Michael Reid turned on the burners to catch up, instinctually pulling on Horn's jersey to try to slow down the speedster.

It was a flag, something that would've given the offense yardage anyways during a game. But Horn didn't need it, fighting forwards even with the overzealous defense, and made a diving catch towards the sideline.

It's a reminder of just how deep this receiver group is, and what the Panthers are finding in the corps.

"They're all challenging each other and pushing each other, and you don't feel like there's a huge drop off when you go from one group to the next," bragged Idzik.

Added corner Jaycee Horn of the catch: "He made a tough catch across the middle today. He laid out for it.

"You got to put hands on Jimmy. He too fast. It's hard to guard him at all because of his speed. He plays tough, you know. I don't think he get a lot of credit for how tough he plays with his size because he is a smaller receiver, but you see him in camp."

The rain made things a little sloppy as the day wore on, but Hunter Renfrow ensured there was still one more impressive catch to end practice. As the team went into red zone team drills, the veteran receiver flashed his patented route running in the middle of the field, peeling off his defender to cut across the front corner of the end zone.

Bryce Young hit him there for the touchdown that was part great throw, part Renfrow using his body to get just past the pylon.

"I said it earlier in camp, he real good at creating separation with route stems," Jaycee Horn said. "He has so much trickery in his routes, so he definitely a tough cover."

Experimenting with new kickoff techniques

The Panthers are like the rest of the league this preseason, experimenting with the way they're handling kickoffs.

Last Friday against the Browns, special teams coordinator Tracy Smith put an emphasis on Matthew and Ryan dropping their kickoffs into the "landing zone" (between the goal line and the 20), to make returners field something before they can return it.

Smith said he and vice president of football analytics Eric Eager discussed the strategy this offseason, but sometimes it's as simple as making the other guy make a play. With this year's adjustments to last year's radical change to the "dynamic kickoff," touchbacks are placed at the 35-yard line, which is a dramatic disincentive to booting it to or through the end zone. Of course, the rule was designed to force more returns, so that's on purpose.

The Browns returned three kickoffs for 53 yards (an acceptable 17.7 per return average), and started their drives on their own 22, 27, and 10. You'll take that.

"You get an advantage when the ball's on the ground," Smith said. "If you can get the ball to the ground while you're covering and they're still standing still, you have a huge advantage. So we're aiming for that. It took the kickers a long time to be able to work on that skill. Guys didn't have that. That wasn't a good kick in the past, so we've been kind of pushing for guys to develop that.

"Some teams, as you watch around the NFL, have it and some teams still don't. So, we're going to press that as much as we can on our live kicks in the preseason so we can keep working on it."

Smith joked that he has two basic versions of the kick, "left" and "right."

"I say left and then we see what happens," Smith deadpanned. "So yeah, kick it over to the left and then sometimes right if we want to really change it up."

But it's clearly more complicated than that. He said he's seen a number of variations, the kinds of small differences only a trained professional with years of experience can discern.

"From all the teams, somebody's doing something else," Smith said. "You'll see a different one in Houston that Matt tried today, after watching him do it, hadn't tried that one before, tried it today. The Raiders have something else; everybody has their own little take on it. It's kind of like kicking field goals. If you don't know, they all look exactly the same. If you do know, everybody's got a little something."

Rookie outside linebackers learning on the fly

We've seen second-rounder Nic Scourton run all over the field, and we've seen third-rounder Princely Umanmielen flash at times in practice.

For defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, it's the daily growth from the two he's latching onto now, because so much of what's coming their way is new.

"They're getting better," Evero said. "They're getting better; it's very clear. The challenge with that position, especially in the spring, is that you know you just can't have the contact that you need to really evaluate them to really see how they're developing. It's been really good to see the pads on. We're going against tight ends, we're going against tackles, and we're seeing a physical aspect of things. And since the first day we put on the pads up to our padded practice yesterday, there's been a really a lot of growth and a lot of improvement, and so that's what we're looking for there."

Those two are fortunate to have a couple of veterans in Patrick Jones II and D.J. Wonnum in front of them, which gives them the ability to learn without the same burden of expectations that a lot of rookies carry.

And that's helpful, because they're learning things every day that they hadn't been taught in college.

"It's in everything," Evero said of their improvement. "It's in, first of all, their communication, it's in their stance, it's in the things that they're keying, what they're looking at, eyes being in the right spot, rolling off the ball like we're trying to encourage them to do, striking blocks even in their pass coverage.

"So it's been great because a lot of the things we're asking them to do, they didn't really do a lot of it in college. And so, I've been really, really happy to see how they've developed and grown these last couple of weeks."