With help from Shaq, Trevin Wallace prepares for the first start

When Wallace's phone rang Monday afternoon with a text message from Thompson, the rookie wasn't too surprised to see that the man himself had insight into how Shaq approaches the game, a complete recap of the Bears game based on things Wallace in Thompson's opinion had to watch.

“Him being such a vet helped me a lot,” Wallace said. “I’m going to watch his breakdown right here… it was really good. This is a great vet.”

With 10 years of experience in the NFL, Thompson has seen a lot around the league. That's why he wanted to specifically summarize the things Wallace should keep an eye on from the Bears.

“He told me to pay attention to the O-line because the Bears are moving a lot of spacing,” Wallace shared. “So, watch the O-line, clean eyes, then strike. And the last thing he told me was, fly around and play football. He said go play like you're in college. Just fly around, play ball and have fun.”

The way Wallace played in college was one of the reasons Panthers general manager Dan Morgan fell in love with the off-the-ball reliever.

“Athletic freak, a guy that can run sideline to sideline and beat ball carriers, and I think his ceiling is really high,” Morgan said of Wallace in April after drafting him. “I think he’s a guy that will continue to develop and become a good linebacker for us.”

At the time, it seemed months, maybe even years, away. The Panthers knew what they expected from Wallace in college, but weren't sure how that would translate to the NFL. However, after getting a lot of playing time in the preseason, linebackers coach Pete Hansen began to realize that an NFL player is ready to play sooner rather than later.

“I really like his appearance on matchday, which we learned about in pre-season preparation,” said Hansen on Thursday. “Search and destroy, but I mean he does some calculations in there, which is good.”

“We didn't know exactly what we were going to get until the preseason games and we really saw not only the effort but the strength and, you know, his block destruction with his shot and finding the guy with the ball to attack could.” him.

“We were excited about him from the start and when we saw him in the game it was exactly what we had hoped.”