"Over time, you have losing seasons, you have the winning seasons, and I just think this was the perfect moment, the perfect season for all these things to kind of leak out of what we were already doing in practice in meeting rooms, bus rides, airplane rides, eating lunch together, whatever," Stewart said. "It was just an opportunity for us to really showcase our personality a little bit more because we're winning.
"When you're losing games, you're not, you know, celebrating anything. It's not fun playing football and losing games, but when you start the season off 6-0, that's pretty fun, you know? So, I think that team, everybody had a presence about them. They understood that this was a special team, a special season. I think that was just a special, special time where, to the public, it was new, but for us it was something that was in our DNA."
During those years, Stewart lived in a condo near work, so the immediacy of what was happening at Bank of America Stadium was inescapable. And every time he went to work, he realized what the city was experiencing.
"I lived right downtown, so every home game I would go to the elevator and look out of the window where I have a perfect view of the stadium," he said. "and I'm able to just take in the experience that a lot of people are having and hopefully coming away with a win, so that way everybody can go on about their their their lives in a way that is meaningful and impactful for the week. Sunday games, Monday games, and then the rest of the week, being able to have this positive energy to finish throughout the week.
"And I think when you talk about Charlotte, and you roll up on some fans that have experienced 2015, the phrase, 'What a time to be alive.' That comes up a lot. But people say that a lot because it was a time to be alive.
"It made you feel alive."
And for the Panthers that season, that was every day.
Because it was so much fun, it never really felt like work.