CHARLOTTE — When the Panthers lost by dreadful margins or in emotionally charged games, linebacker Luke Kuechly would always do the same thing on the plane ride home.

"Eat an ice cream bar?" Kuechly said with a shrug on Wednesday. "Really nothing."

There's a perception that in the aftermath of the kind of loss like the Panthers took in last week's opener in New Orleans, drastic action is required.

But for Kuechly, the plane ride home from a loss like the 51-13 defeat at San Francisco in 2019 wasn't terribly different from the plane rides home from the wins.

"Let's see here. Get on the plane, get settled. I used to sit next to Colin Jones. I would talk to Colin for a while," he began. "(Ryan) Kalil used to sit right in front of me, maybe talk to him for a little bit, and then I'd go up and see Greg (Olsen) and DA (Derek Anderson) and JJ (Jansen) talk to them for a little bit. Cam (Newton) was always sleeping next to them.

"And then by that time, you go back to your seat and sit down, and you land. Greg and DA and JJ would maybe watch the offensive tape, and I'd go up there and learn about offense and then I come sit back down."

If that sounds kind of boring and routine, that's by design.

Kuechly's the gold standard for preparation, and he said that you have to fight the urge to do something extra based on the result of the previous game, win or lose.

"So Monday for me, I come in, work out, watch our game, and then I'd start watching the other team on Monday," he said. "So then by that time you're like, like whatever happened is what happened. There's nothing I can do about it. You figure out what you did incorrectly and how I'm going to get better.

"And then Monday is like, all right, I've got to worry about the next game because you can't catch back up. So if I miss Monday, then that impacts Tuesday and then I've got an extra long day on Tuesday. It just affects everything.

"So just that's why I think having a routine is so important. Because then you don't make the decisions; you do your routine."

That's similar to the message head coach Dave Canales had on Monday. The tape was bad. The tape was used as a teaching tool. The tape was then stored because there was work to do to get ready for the Chargers game this week.

So for Kuechly, it was a matter of getting back to work, but those who have been on the other side of it know there are other things to be done.

Former linebacker Thomas Davis has been a part of his share of such games, having played here long enough to have been part of the 37-3 loss to the Steelers in 2006, which was followed by the Christmas Eve Wildcat win at Atlanta the following week, to the 52-21 loss at Pittsburgh in 2018 (which featured the injury to quarterback Cam Newton) that triggered a seven-game slide.

From being a part of it with coaches John Fox and Ron Rivera, he said the importance of keeping it in the context of one part of an extremely long season was key.

"You just threw the film out; you don't sit there on it," Davis said. "I think coach (Rivera) did a really good job of the way he approached it. He didn't sit there and dog cuss us like, oh y'all this, y'all that, and beat us down. It was just one of those things where we watched a little bit of the film, and then we moved on; we had already gone through enough.

"I think this is the time where veteran leadership really kicks in. They have to step up and not allow the hole in the ship to continue to get bigger."

There have been times when the response to a big loss has been dramatic, if not necessarily as a result of the previous game.

In that 2006 game at Atlanta, when a shortage of healthy quarterbacks left them to turn DeAngelo Williams into a single-wing back, the Panthers didn't have a choice.

Starting quarterback Jake Delhomme had broken his thumb three weeks earlier when he hit Eagles defensive tackle Darwin Walker's helmet while throwing a pass. Backup Chris Weinke was dealing with a rib injury that day and could barely move (the only touchdown of that game was a 1-yard strike to tight end Jeff King). So faced with a scenario where Brett Basanez — a little run-around rookie from Northwestern — was their only truly healthy quarterback, the Panthers improvised.

Fox and Dan Henning put together the plan to maximize the run game, and it worked. They threw just seven passes on the day, but Williams and Deshaun Foster led the way with 52 carries for 183 yards in the 10-7 win.

And though the plane ride home that night was a brief one, it felt like a party because a load had been lifted off their shoulders.

"It was just hilarious; guys were pumped because we had lost three in a row," Delhomme said. "Foxy was moonwalking because we ran the ball, what, 47 times or 42 or whatever (underselling it dramatically).

"They weren't prepared for it, and we ran it over and over again for DeAngelo and Deshaun."

But most times, it's not nearly as dramatic a shift.

The current Panthers are entering Week 2 of an 18-game season, so there's no reason to re-write the playbook on the fly. And there's also at least a shred of statistical evidence that bounce-backs can be real. Of the other six losses of 34 points or more in franchise history, the Panthers were 4-2 the following week. That's a small enough of a sample size to possibly be a coincidence, but it does suggest the larger point is true. It's one game. It's not required to be a trend.

To Kuechly's mind, that's the appropriate way to handle it. You go through your routine, one which he trusted through the ups and downs for eight seasons.

"I think the first thing that you want to do is watch the tape," Kuechly said. "I always felt like when you watch the tape, now you really know what's going on in your mind. You can make stuff up in your mind (off memory), but when you watch the tape, it's, hey, what actually happened? Was I in the right place? Did I do a good job? Did I do a bad job?

"So, for me, I want to get in and watch the tape as soon as I can. It would usually be about noon on Monday, but if I had a bad game or I felt I didn't play very well, I'd get in early and watch it real fast. So then you know what's coming, and that puts you at ease a little bit."

What he didn't do was try to watch the film on the plane right home. There were stories to share with Jones and Kalil, jokes to make with Olsen and Anderson and Jansen.

There was ice cream to eat because there was the recognition that there was another one next week.

"It's just competitive," Kuechly said. "At the end of the day you just want to win. I just want to win. I don't care about anything else. I want to win, and if you don't win, it's disappointing for how hard you work. And it's like I can't wait for next week.

"I can't wait for Monday, and then I can't wait for Wednesday to have practice because then the new week starts, and then you want to go play again by that time. Then it's kind of gone, and you have to get rid of it."