CHARLOTTE — How does one create championship DNA?

Is it inherited? Is it grown and developed? Or a result of the right chemistry of people? A little bit of all those things?

The approach has been two-fold for the Carolina Panthers: bring in the right people and push them in the right direction together. Both attributes are helped by signing free agents with experience winning championships.

In addition to four members on the coaching staff who have won Super Bowls—Dave Canales and Pat McPherson with Seattle, Ejiro Evero and Jonathan Cooley with the Rams—the Panthers have six players on their current roster who have been a part of Super Bowl-winning teams. Five of those guys won their ring with the Los Angeles Rams following the 2021 season: Bobby Brown III, Austin Corbett, A'Shawn Robinson, Christian Rozeboom, and Nick Scott.

The setup in Carolina versus Los Angeles is different. The Rams took a top-down approach until recently, whereas coach Dave Canales encourages a player-led approach that flows upward. The result can be the same, players think, with the process maybe even more enjoyable.

"I learned this (is) real family-oriented and player(-oriented)," said Brown of the differences between Los Angeles and the Panthers. "It's like, it's a lot of work on the coaches, but it's mainly all the responsibility on the players, and I like that.

"I feel like it's something you should expect everywhere, but I wouldn't say it's something you'd expect everywhere because everywhere isn't the same. It was a pleasant surprise, but coming from a team that's mainly coach-led and front office-led, it's different, but it's nice, though."

The other Super Bowl winner is Tershawn Wharton, who spent four years with the Kansas City Chiefs, a part of two championship runs and four seasons ending in a Super Bowl appearance.

The goal is to increase competition across the board and create leaders who forge a path for those around them.

And while each Super Bowl winner brings a lesson or insight from their race for a ring, there is some recency bias and acknowledgment of how chasing four championship game appearances shapes a person when it comes to Wharton.

"I think one of the great things I love about Turk so far, what I've seen is he's got constant feedback," noted coach Dave Canales. "He's talking to the guys that are out there when he's not out there. When he does go, he jogs off, and he's sharing something with coach (Todd) Wash.

"That kind of focus and intentionality, the guy's been to four Super Bowls, won two. There's a reason that that culture, he's bringing that part of it to our team by just showing guys that all these walkthrough reps matter.

"Every time you get out there, go with everything you've got. He's chasing the ball down the right way, with the understanding that you may only get four reps in this rack. Go for it. Find your conditioning. Find your technique work, and let's continue to talk and improve our processes."

The process can range from club to club, coach to coach. But the pillars should be the same. To Wharton, there are five pillars to creating championship DNA and, more importantly, capitalizing on it.

Wharton is relatively soft-spoken and gentle—or as gentle as a 6-1 280-pound defensive tackle can be—so it would be easy to assume he is also quiet and timid.

That couldn't be further from the truth.

He can easily dive into most conversations, be it attending his first hockey game or the number of Whataburgers in Missouri. And when asked about the blueprint for creating a championship mindset, Wharton can wax poetically for minutes on end, delivering a monologue for eight-plus minutes, uninterrupted, a veritable eternity in an interview. The only thing to make him stop and catch a breath, a prompt from the photographer that it's his turn on set at production day.

While in Kansas City, Wharton was on the front lines, literally, in a club speeding towards a dynasty. He first entered the NFL in 2020 as an undrafted free agent, a Division-II product joining a stacked defensive front that included multiple Pro Bowlers.

That's where Wharton's first pillar comes from: treacherous trenches.

Treacherous Trenches

"It sounds crazy, but a D-line room will really take you there as much as a quarterback," Wharton began.

"I mean, that's where it all started. Like every time we made it (to the Super Bowl), our D-line, no matter who it was like we had Chris Jones, other guys probably unknown, but the level of play that you could bring—like we knew Chris was getting double-teamed. We know everybody else around him, we gotta eat; George Karlaftis. Another guy that probably doesn't get as much credit as he should.

"But just knowing that when it's time, just when it starts off, because I mean Week 1, you're not going to be where you want to be, you know tough games come down, you got to know who to call on. Me and DB ( Derrick Brown ), it's going to be times where it ain't all about Bryce Young sometimes or all about Jaycee (Horn). Can you put pressure on the quarterback in these tough times?

"So I just know the defensive side of the thing is, Spags (Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo) always was just on us. And then those moments of like two-minute situations like them are massive in games; you get a sack, two sacks in two minute (drills).

"(Coach Andy Reid's) not only a Hall of Famer, but he emphasized every day before we play, O-line, y'all got to go, D-line y'all got to. It doesn't go without y'all."

Rethink December

Every game matters, but in a 17-game schedule where the goal is to get in the playoffs, preferably as the winner of your division, there is something to be said for understanding the ups and downs of the entire schedule. December, for all intents and purposes, Wharton said, is the playoffs as well.

And playing your divisional games hard early can provide breathing room late in the year when attrition affects injuries.

"Just being consistent, like, you know, not getting too high, too low because you can have early success, but it doesn't matter when you start coming to December. That's when it matters. You can have all early success, and we call them pretenders, the team that probably went 8-0 Now they get to December, and they just, you know, why do they keep losing? Why do they keep losing? They don't know it's time," Wharton explained.

He recalled last season when the Chiefs could sit their starters for the regular season finale against the Broncos because the No. 1 seed was already locked up in December.

"That's the playoff push right there, no matter if you're going to be a wild card or number one seed."

Mistake Free Football

"The playoffs are so fast," Wharton shared. "Everything gets fast because it's all the teams that don't make mistakes. Really, there are no mistakes being made. It's mistake-free football."

Football is a game of inches, and when teams play meaningful games late in the season, every play, every blade of grass, can make a difference. As the Panthers put together a second-half push last season, there were three losses that were one-possession games with plays that haunted the team in the aftermath. It was a sobering reminder for a young, growing team.

"All them games get to one (possession), a lot of them games get won by three, won by a touchdown," Wharton continued. "There ain't really no blowouts in the playoffs. We got blown out in the Super Bowl, though," he said with a self-deprecating laugh before quickly moving on.

"And health too, like the healthiest team usually make it. The Eagles were healthy. Nobody was hurting. We had a guard out. We put our guard at tackle. We brought a practice squad guy up.

"We almost already won in everybody's eyes like, oh yeah, they are talking about trademarking the word three-peat. So it's just, I feel, people want revenge in this game…them boys were hungry, and they were hunting. They were hunting, and they weren't letting off."

Be Disciplined

The Chiefs were the fourth-least penalized team in the NFL last season, with 94 flags. The most penalized team was the New York Jets, who received a whopping 137 penalties. The Panthers, for what it's worth, had 118 during the regular season.

Disciplined teams make it further in this game. It's something Dave Canales has harped on repeatedly as well, preaching to his roster to "come back to us" and celebrate or commiserate amongst teammates, not in the open where a penalty could be called. It's also one of the biggest takeaways Wharton brought with him from Kansas City.

"We got a special, we got a special room. And it's like, we got young guys, but you got to bring them along," Wharton said. "They're going to be good. They're going to be good. So just bring them along. They got to know that they can't, like them little penalties that somebody pushing you, you don't want them pushing anybody back, that's 15 yards, that's costly. That's costly.

"So just being disciplined. I think coach (Andy) Reid made us really disciplined. No matter who you were, you listened to him. No matter if you got $20-30 million, we all know when it comes down to coach Reid, we're going to do what he says."

Be Selfless

When the Panthers return in late July to training camp, it will be the height of summer, with two joint practices on the schedule and a new set of expectations on this young roster. It's the time that makes a team, perhaps more than any other. It's also when a club decides on the personality they're going to carry into a season.

Will it be one of passivity? Or one poised to chase a championship?

"It's important to have people who want to do the hard things," explained Rozeboom, who won a title in LA. "That want to do the things to be a successful team, and I think we have that here."

Added Wharton, "You got to come out, you got to want it every day.

"Just the energy you bring out there every day, that want to when you know it's getting hard, and then, you'll see a team merge together. You see, everything merged together like, oh man, we got it. Like, we got it, everybody making plays, you see the sideline get alive when we making plays, like as a family. Don't matter who the credit goes to.

"That's when it gets special."