CHARLOTTE — Jake Delhomme couldn't figure it out. It was December of his first full season as a starting quarterback. And the 28-year-old, who was new to this town but had already learned about Bojangles, didn't understand why weight kept falling off of him as the season progressed.

It was enough of a concern that his wife Keri leaned over the table at a 2003 charity event and asked Delhomme's backup quarterback what was wrong.

Naturally, Rodney Peete knew.

"Keri leans over and asked Rodney, hey, what can I do? I'm cooking, I'm trying," Delhomme recalled. "And Rodney started laughing. He said, Keri, it's called stress. He said it's good stress, too. You don't realize that your body is taking a beating.

"Especially your first time going through it, I mean, that was just an example. We're talking about eating, you know what I mean? But just little things like that, I just think it's very valuable to have a guy like that at your disposal."

Peete was 37 at the time and shepherded Delhomme through his first two seasons with the Panthers. And those kinds of little tips, small bits of wisdom, and remembrances of defensive looks past are what Delhomme came to rely on as he got his feet wet in the league as a starter.

And that kind of experience is something there's no substitute for, which is what the Panthers are hoping for this weekend after turning to 36-year-old Andy Dalton to start against the Raiders.

For Panthers coach Dave Canales, the stress of replacing second-year quarterback Bryce Young this week came with the comfort of knowing that Dalton is hard to rattle. He's worked with veterans before, like Geno Smith. He watched Russell Wilson grow from a rookie to a seasoned player and helped Baker Mayfield improve after he went through his growing pains elsewhere.

"I just think that when you have a lot of games under your belt, I think about Russ, I think about Geno, I think about Baker and I think about Andy, and the amount of games that they've seen," Canales said this week. "The different ways that defenses try to attack you, you can just anticipate things, you can see stuff happen before things are actually happening, and you know how to have solutions for those things.

"So look, looking forward to Andy being able to do that."

Dalton's walking into an admittedly unusual situation this year, but a situation he's seen before. He's started 163 games in the league, 133 in his nine years as the Bengals' guy, and then another 30 as he's bounced through stints with the Cowboys, Bears, Saints, and Panthers. He's been the starter, he's been the backup. He's been benched for a young player, and he's stepped in.

When he was a rookie starter for the Bengals in 2011, he leaned on Bruce Gradkowski. The backup had played for Bengals coach Jay Gruden's brother Jon and helped Dalton learn a new language as he can win from TCU. And with the passage of time, Dalton has learned about that offense and a lot more as he's progressed through 14 NFL seasons.

"I've seen a ton of defensive schemes," Dalton said this week. "I've seen a ton of different ways that teams have played. And so there's times where you see something you're like, oh, I remember that from my time in Cincy. I remember that. Oh, Baltimore did this, and it may be something similar to what another team does. So, there's things like that just on pull from my experience.

"But I think just the way you process things now versus being early on in my career, you can process things a lot faster and focus on other things because you're not worried about some of the small details of it all."

Former Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins was established as a starter from Washington when he joined wide receiver Adam Thielen in Minnesota in 2018. As he watched Cousins evolve from a player in his prime to one in the later years of his career, Thielen saw the subtle changes, such as the way he communicated with younger teammates.

"It's like anything in life, right?" Thielen said. "Whether you're a tenured person in your career, or a football player, right? You use your experience to your advantage. I think there's definitely a different way that it's commanded in the huddle just because of experience, right? Learning how to deal with different people, how to communicate, what works to communicate and you learn that over time. So, yeah, I think there is a different way of communicating.

"Every year that you're around someone, every year that you gain experience, you might change the way you do things a little bit. Like whatever I did then probably isn't working, or let's add this to this, or maybe sometimes it's just confidence because now you have those reps under your belt, maybe you have like those, those great plays under your belt that you feel like you've earned the respect to be able to communicate in a certain way.

Thielen said he felt that this week when Dalton walked onto the practice field in a new role.

"He just has a way of communicating within the huddle, outside of the huddle, just to kind of exude confidence and energy and excitement," Thielen said. "He has a really good way to react to a lot of people. You can feel that when he gets in the huddle. But again, that's just experience."

While the goal for every team is to find a young quarterback and play them for a long period — like the Bengals did with Dalton — there can be a benefit to playing veteran quarterbacks.

Delhomme is the role model here, coming to the Panthers at what amounts to middle age, and going 36-23 as the starter after his 30th birthday — the time he knew what to do.

In the history of the Panthers franchise, he's the winningest older quarterback, but he's far from the only one. Passers past their 30th birthday are 72-79 here, a .477 winning percentage that's ahead of the team's .456 overall mark.

All-time Panthers QBs, after their 30th birthday

And it wasn't just Delhomme. The inaugural Panthers made sure to backstop rookie Kerry Collins with Frank Reich and Jack Trudeau in 1995 and brought in Steve Beuerlein the following year to help him along. Beuerlein went 3-1 as the starter in 1996 when Collins was injured, helping the second-year team to the NFC Championship Game. He'd also play some of his best football in 1999, throwing for a career-best and league-high 4,436 yards, with 36 touchdowns and just 15 interceptions for a coach that didn't even particularly want him (George Seifert).

That's not the only time the Panthers have turned to guys who have seen some things. When Delhomme was injured in 2007, they called 44-year-old Vinny Testaverde out of retirement, and he won a pair of games for them (and taught guys including Steve Smith and DeAngelo Williams some important lessons along the way).

Peete was instrumental to the first Super Bowl run, going 8-7 as the starter here, lending stability to the 2002 rebuild prior to Delhomme's arrival (and getting credit for the 2003 opener even though he was replaced by the newcomer at halftime of the opener against Jacksonville).

Delhomme wasn't exactly a rookie when he arrived here, but he didn't have much in the way of experience (exactly two starts for the Saints, including one against the Panthers in 1999, when he threw four interceptions). By that time, Peete had 12 years in the league and over 100 appearances.

"Rodney, for me, was great because, you know, I was high-strung," Delhomme said. "I could get a little whatever, and Rodney never did. He never got that way. You know, he was older, and he had seen it."

Having someone behind him that he could trust had a practical application on the field, as well as in a week of preparation. When he was learning his trade with the Saints and making his lap through NFL Europe, he could occasionally talk to the Billy Joes (Hobert and Tolliver), but the Saints weren't well-stocked with mentors. When he landed in Charlotte, he realized immediately what he had in Peete.

"My first three years in the NFL, I was clueless," Delhomme said with a laugh. "I would have given anything to have a veteran presence. I didn't know what I didn't know. I never had that true veteran to show me the way.

"As a young player, you want to please everyone so much, so you'll tell a coach, yes, I can do all this, I like this play. A veteran could say dude, you don't have to like every play. If there's something you're a little concerned about, take it out."

So after his time with the Panthers was finished, he tried to pass along the wisdom of a 35-year-old to a third-round rookie named Colt McCoy in Cleveland.

McCoy was struggling in his first preseason, and Delhomme remembered giving him a simple tip. You're surrounded by rookies fighting for the last job on the roster. Throw it to veterans instead, like longtime wideout Bobby Engram, who was trying to hang on for a 15th season.

"It was in the last preseason game, and he was terrible, and I was like, hey, just listen to me, just do this, just trust me," Delhomme recalled. "Whoever your veterans are in there, just throw it to them. They're gonna be where they're supposed to be. They're dying for a job. These young kids are clueless, and he went like 14-for-14. I remember halfway during the game, he came up to me, he was like, holy s---. I said, yeah, bro, just slow down. He was shocked; he was floored. I just told him, dude, relax, it's going to come."

That was the benefit of seeing a few things.

And that's what Dalton's leaning on this week.

The veteran is getting used to the increased attention, but he hasn't done much of anything else differently. And that's what the Panthers are counting on, as they search for some stability on offense.

"Obviously it's been a while since I've been in this position," Dalton said. "But the good thing is my routine hasn't changed at all from when I was playing to when I wasn't playing. It's like I had my routine. I knew exactly what I was going to do each day of the week and how I was going to prepare. So, besides having a lot of friends and family excited, my routine's been the same."