Panthers leave training camp feeling more connected, and physical, than they have in years

Canales has never been shy about challenging his locker room to make this a player-led team. So, when things started to get a little too physical in practice, he pulled everyone into the team meeting room and started filtering through physical plays from practice.

It wasn’t a slideshow with do’s and don’ts. It was a democracy. Guys got to vote on the “gray areas” and decide what they were OK with during practice — within the rules — and what they felt was taking it too far.

“We had an opportunity in the team meeting to just say, OK, let’s take the gray out of some of these situations, and that falls on me. If there’s a gray area, that’s because I didn’t define it well enough, so we took some clips from practice that led to the scuffles,” the coach explained at the time in mid-August.

“And so we just watched the plays together, and we had an open forum conversation. Guys talked about what they could do better. If the guy didn’t quite have the information, I said, ‘Here’s how I see this play playing out.’ So we just attacked it that way.

“The one thing is these guys are pushing each other. They understand we make us, we make us better, by everybody going as hard as physically possible; that brings out the best in each other, so we need that.”