CHARLOTTE — If you want to know why it was important for the Panthers to bring backup quarterback Andy Dalton back for two more seasons, it's not just about the kind of mentor or player he is.

It's about the kind of artist he is, or how mad he gets at himself for not immediately mastering a skill he hadn't practiced in 11 years.

For Andy Dalton, it's about the details.

When he came in to sign his new two-year contract with the Panthers on Tuesday, he brought the whole family, and his son busied himself at a table drawing the team's logo while looking at his hat. As it turns out, the artistic vibe is hereditary because Dalton quickly pulled out his phone and started showing off his own work.

Last season, beginning the week of the Chiefs game, he started doodling the opposing team's logos. By the time they played the Buccaneers, he was ripping out graphic-design quality renditions freehand, including an old-school orange Bucs pirate logo that looked like a photocopy.

"I wanted to get it just right," he said, proud of his work.

He's the same way when painting a teammate for a schedule release video, or on long bus rides from airports to team hotels when players get bored and need a diversion.

"He'd take random photos and like Photoshop his hair onto Eddy Piñeiro's head," long snapper and fellow elder JJ Jansen said. "Or someone's beard on someone else, just fun stuff that we all have a laugh over and send it to the guys.

"He's very talented at all this stuff."

And really, it's everything.

"I mean, he's an excellent tennis player," Jansen added with a hint of admiration, if not jealousy. "He's an excellent pickleball player, ping pong, all the things.

"You know, there's a lot of little nuances that he's just very good at."

Being good at the finer points is kind of Dalton's deal (he can go into detail about the similarities between throwing a football and a tennis stroke), but it comes with a cost. The Red Rifle can burn hot at times.

Dalton's anger bubbled to the surface last season when a last-second attempt at holding for field goals in practice — not a game, practice — didn't go the way he hoped.

Punter Johnny Hekker, who normally holds Jansen's snaps for placement, was out that day while his wife was having a baby. So Dalton approached special teams coach Tracy Smith before practice to see if he'd be needed during the field goal period.

"I talked with Tracy earlier in the day, and I said, 'Hey, Johnny's not going to be here, am I going to have to hold? Because if that's the case, I want to make sure I know what I'm doing and I want to get some practice at it,'" Dalton recalled. "And he's like, 'Don't worry about it, you're fine. You're not doing it.'

"And then it became field goal period, and he's like, 'Hey, you're holding.' I'm like, 'OK, well, I would like to get some work at this.'"

Smith was probably speaking globally rather than specifically to that day since Hekker's absence was expected to be a brief one, and everyone figured he'd be back for that week's game.

As it turns out, Piñeiro missed a couple of kicks that day in practice — "All my fault," Dalton said accountably — which triggered another wave of work.

"I was mad at Tracy because I'm like, come on, let me at least let me know because if I'm going do something, I want to do it to the best of my ability, and I want to be good at it," he said. "And so when you haven't had very many reps at the whole thing, and there's some specific stuff that you have to know for what the kicker wants."

So after that day's practice, Dalton made Jansen hang around for an extra 10 or 15 snaps because even though there was little to no chance he'd be needed that week, he wanted to be ready.

Of course, he had done it before — twice actually — in 2013 when he was with the Bengals. He was called in as an emergency measure after punter Kevin Huber suffered a broken jaw while covering a punt and getting blind-sided. Dalton, the team's starting quarterback, had to do something he hadn't done in practice, hadn't done in high school or college. But it worked.

"Mike Nugent was 2-for-2," Dalton beamed at the memory of those successful extra points he held for the Bengals kicker in a 11-years-ago loss to the Steelers.

But muscle memory only gets you so far, so Dalton took extra work after the practice this season to make sure he knew how to do a thing they knew he wouldn't need to do that week, just in case he ever needed to.

And it was clear that not being perfect at the side hustle irked him.

"He was really bothered after the period since he didn't really get any heads up at all," Jansen recalled with a laugh. "We were trying a few different things. We also did not want to disturb practice for the offense. So by the time we started to kick, there really wasn't a whole lot Andy could do; we just kind of threw him into the period.

"He did well, but the nuances of kicking — the lean, where you can miss the spot and where you can't miss the spot, we hadn't got into any of that. It was more line up, catch a snap, put it down. Well, what happened was in a few of the cases, some of those nuances were causing Eddy to miss. We knew immediately when the ball was put down on the ground that it was going to cause Eddy trouble. We're like, OK, don't worry about it. You did all the important stuff. You caught it; you got it down. Now, let's work a little bit after practice or whatever on the finer details.

"But he was really upset because he's like, no, I want to do this now because I want to be good at this. Like, if you need me, I'm not going to be OK with just being serviceable. I want to be really good at it to help the team."

Dalton laughs now, but the anger that day was real.

"The way I'm wired, if I'm going to do it, I want to make sure I'm good at it," he said. "And so I'm going to put the time and effort to make sure that I'm going to be the best I can be."

That's the kind of attitude and attention to detail that allows you to last as long as Dalton has and compile as many numbers as he's stacked.

The 37-year-old is entering his 15th season, and he's thrown for 39,500 yards and 253 touchdowns.

He's 26th on both lists all-time, ahead of many Hall of Famers, including Jim Kelly, Troy Aikman, Steve Young, and Kurt Warner. Seriously, he grew up in Texas, idolizing Aikman, and has 88 more touchdown passes than the Cowboys legend. That's partly because of the inflation of modern passing stats but also because Dalton's been really good at this for a long time.

And you don't last that long unless you're detailed.

That's why the Panthers trust him in a pinch, and that's why they trust him to continue to develop Bryce Young.

Panthers head coach Dave Canales said the day after the season he'd "love" to have Dalton back, and in getting that wish, he can now continue to build on what they showed the second half of the season. And with Dalton's demonstrated ability to help Young — the starter is super-effusive in his praise of the guy he meets with daily — the decision to keep him was logical.

"Me and Andy are super close," Young said. "From when I first got here, just being able to talk with him through things, him having perspective on a situation that I had never been a part of, I was always leaning on him, always having conversations and just from a day-to-day basis.

"You can't add up the hours we spend here; we're here every single day, and just being able to have someone that you can bounce stuff off of, ask how you see things. Whether it's Xs and Os or it's philosophical things or stuff outside of football or somewhere nuanced in between. He is always there, just trying to help me out. And again, having a guy like that who really does it for the right reasons and wants to help, that's super rare. So I'm super grateful for that."

Management saw that relationship too, and it has a value.

"I know that Andy's a really supportive teammate," general manager Dan Morgan said at the end of the season. "And I know that him and Bryce have a super close relationship. So you definitely have to say that you know Andy was there for him and one of his biggest fans, and I'm sure he'd tell you that he's super proud of him, too."

And because of the progress they've shown, Dalton was quick to stay, nearly a month before the start of a free agent market in which there would have been interest from others.

But Dalton and his family like Charlotte, have come to consider it home since arriving prior to a 2023 season that didn't go as planned. So the football part of what's happening now makes him want to remain here too.

"I think the trajectory of this team is trending in the right direction, and you want to be a part of it," Dalton said. "From when it wasn't as easy to win games and to see where it's going to go and to feel where it's going to go. The right people are here, and they're going to keep adding to it, so it's something that I didn't want to just be part of at the beginning of it and then be away and then see the success and see where it goes. But now I want to be part of the whole building of this thing.

"I've had a lot of conversations with the organization, with Dan, with so many people up there, and even in the middle of the season, it was like we want to be back; we want to be part of this. And it felt the same from them. And with all that, it's like, I'm glad the timing worked out. This is the first time I've ever, ever been re-signed this early in free agency because normally, I've been searching for a new team. But I'm just glad it all got done, and I'm glad it happened early and don't have to worry about anything going into free agency, right?"

Of course, there's always the chance that he might get drafted into the graphic design department for a future project. Or that he might have to hold for a field goal someday. You never know.

There's always something for Andy Dalton to worry about, and work to improve.