CHARLOTTE — It was a rain-soaked Thursday for the Panthers, who at least got a break from the heat with the first signs of Hurricane Helene bearing down on Charlotte. The players didn't care though, as corner Jaycee Horn pointed out, he'd rather practice in the rain because, "I'm not a heat guy."

Added Shaq Thompson, "It's football weather…you like the shower, right? It's just like that. It's just water."

And with those immortal words in mind, let's jump into the Panthers injury updates.

Receiver Diontae Johnson (groin) was a new addition to the report on Thursday, as the Panthers take a cautious approach ahead of Sunday's game. He told reporters he's all right, but didn't want to make anything worse and that he should be good to go for Sunday.

Offensive guard Damien Lewis, who did not practice Wednesday or Thursday with an elbow/UCL injury (ulnar collateral ligament), is not putting a timeline on his recovery, but is leaving the door open to playing Sunday against the Bengals.

"It's something I have to play with and help the team win games and manage the pain during the season," Lewis said Thursday, adding he will likely wear an elbow brace. He joked doctors told him this is normally a baseball injury, but it happened when he engaged in blocking a defender and someone hit him on his left side.

Lewis is part of a starting five that has consistently graded out as a top five offensive line through the first three weeks of the season, and overall have the second lowest pressure rate in the NFL thus far (17.9 percent). Lewis is a big part of that success and has only given up one pressure himself. He knows that means his presence on the field against the Bengals will be crucial, and he's ready. He just needs to grab a couple of things first.

Said Lewis: "I'm going to have to put my big boy pants on, put my brace on and go to work. We got to win games."

Happy Birthday to Tracy Smith's mom!

The Carolina Panthers special teams coordinator wanted to make sure he gave his mom a shout-out on Thursday, snuck in between talk of Eddy Piñeiro warm-up routine and the new process to onside kicks. So, we would like to take the time to do the same and send well wishes to the woman Smith only classified as now "old enough to be my mother."

From there, let's take a page out of Smith's book and jump straight back into the football of it all as well.

The Panthers faced their first onside kick of the season against the Raiders on Sunday. Las Vegas attempted the kick with less than a minute to play, trailing by 14 points. All things considered, it was a fairly normal onside kick attempt. The Raiders' Daniel Carlson didn't try any sort of special bounce, the ball traveled the requisite 10 yards (going 12 yards total) and Panthers' Ja'Tavion Sanders was there to recover the ball to give the Panthers possession quickly.

It was the pre-snap operation that was a bit of a reality shock to Smith. Under the NFL's new rules for kickoffs, a team must alert their opponent if they plan to conduct an onside kick. They are also only allowed in the 4^th quarter, and only if a team is trailing.

"The officials come over and tell you that, in that case, the Raiders are going to attempt an onside kick. So that's kind of a bizarre moment," Smith admitted Thursday, while recapping how the first attempt at covering this season went.

Only four other teams have attempted the onside kick this season: the Commanders, the Colts, the 49ers and the Cowboys, the latter of whom became the first team to successfully recover the kick. As Smith explained, other than the element of having the official provide a heads-up to better prepare before the kick, everything after the kick was the same, and worked exactly as the Panthers hoped.

"The process is different," Smith explained. "Everything else is the same as it's been the last few years.

"For our first one out there in the season, we went pretty smooth. The guys were ready to go and saw what we expected to see and made a good play."

One thing that did change – because it didn't change at all – was how Smith and his unit prepared for kickoffs in general.

"Teams have changed less than you would have thought from the preseason to the regular season," Smith explained Thursday.

Coming into the regular season, Smith was prepared for teams to change how they played the kickoff, given the league's new rules around landing zones and touchback rules. The special teams coordinator presumed that what teams showed in the preseason would be the more basic formation, with more dynamic formations making their debut in the regular season, with more core special teamers on the field. Instead, as Smith went on to say, most teams have used the same tactics they put on film during the preseason.

"The stuff that they decided was the answer in August, most teams have stuck," Smith said. "There's a few examples, unnamed, of teams that have changed fundamentally, their technique or their thoughts on it, but mostly it's gone straight through."

Asked why he thought there would be fundamental changed, Smith jokingly admitted, "I thought there was going to be huge mistakes, that we were going to be wrong about things and like, 'Ok, no, that's out.'"

For the Panthers, that period of time happened in the spring, where they tried out multiple ideas and possibilities, seeing what worked with their own personnel and what didn't. As teams have introduced their style to the game though, the response from teams covering kicks hasn't constituted wholesale change. Kickoffs are still averaging between 63 and 76 yards, and returns are hovering around the 25-yard mark.

"People have taught their stuff and stuck to it," Smith remarked. "So it's been a little less fluid than I was anticipating as far as try this, try that."

Defense looking at more than the Bengals win-loss column

There are a few stats that, typically, can tell you as much or more about a game than the scoreboard. Time of possession and turnover margin is usually a good indicator of who won the game. Another is third down efficiency.

The Cincinnati Bengals are currently 11^th in the NFL in that category, having converted 41.18 percent on third down. It's a stat a lot of teams, two-thirds of the league in fact, would covet. It also doesn't tell the whole story, at least from the Bengals point of view.

On Monday night, versus the Washington Commanders, Joe Burrow and crew converted 60 percent on third down and scored points on six of their seven offensive drives. They lost the game 38-33.

"Offensively, it's weird," Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero—who is preparing to face that Bengals offense on Sunday—noted Thursday to reporters. "I was telling somebody the other day, I was watching the film against the Commanders and like, if you watch the film and look at the scoreboard, it almost doesn't make sense because they're going up and down the field, they're moving the ball, they're converting on third down and then you look at the score and they're behind a couple scores. So, it didn't make sense to me."

There were couple of different factors at play. The Bengals settled for a field goal on two of those six scoring drives, and Washington scored one more touchdown than Cincinnati (the game had no punts). Despite the loss dropping the Bengals to 0-3 ahead of Sunday's showdown with the Panthers, the statistically categories outside of the scoreboard are what Evero is hammering with his group this week.

"We know that this is a really a big challenge for us," Evero said. "This is a very good offense on all downs and, we got to be ready for it."

Ahead of Week 3, the Panthers defense was giving up a 55 percent conversion rate on third down. In Week 3, Evero's group held the Raiders to a 27 percent conversion rate. They were helped out by the Carolina offense giving up only two drive that were three-and-outs. It's a reminder that when facing the Bengals, who winless or not will still move the chains, to play complementary football once again.

"Look at us, the first two games and, you know, what we were able to do on offense and defense, flipping the script against the Raiders on third down. And I thought that was a big part of the game against the Raiders, is that we were able to get off the field on defense," Evero said.

"Our offense was able to sustain drives and I think it's going to be critical in this game as well, and really a lot of games and so it's a big, big part of it and we understand that."