I've been in Charlotte for exactly one month, and have seen the Carolina Panthers do a lot of things during that time.
I've seen eight different Cam Newton hats and three different Cam Newton personalities. I've seen a poor defense and a solid offensive front, then the opposite. I've seen players move in and out of the concussion protocol, in and out of injury rehab. I've seen wide left and wide right. And the dreaded Super Bowl hangover.
I've even seen a 10-minute, 20-play drive that ended in a punt.
One thing I had not seen, though, was anybody having any fun.
Until Tuesday afternoon.
As soon as the locker room doors opened on Tuesday, a wall of music poured out courtesy of fullback Mike Tolbert's speakers, which poke out from his locker and are approximately the size of Ted Ginn Jr. but make three times the noise.
Players shimmied across the carpeted floors from locker to locker, serenading each other to hip-hop and old-school funk songs as reporters trickled into the room.
Tolbert cranked the volume, pressed "play" on The Commodores hit "Brick House" and started belting it out. It takes one to know one, I suppose.
Damiere Byrd hopped onto a laundry hamper and began to dance. Then Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" came on and players whooped and catcalled to each other across the room before the signature chorus _ "YOU! You got what I NEED!" _ dropped. And on it went.
It was a screamingly happy audiovisual overload and certainly not one I expected from that particular room after a truly quiet month in which, day after day, players spent more time sitting in their lockers with their shoulders hunched than boogieing in the aisles.
"A guy like (Mike Tolbert) gets it," Panthers coach Ron Rivera said. "You can't be uptight. You can't be tense and so wound up that you can't focus. That you're so worried about the next thing going wrong. I think that's kind of part of what Mike tries to make sure, that everybody's loose."
