McCaffrey remembers everything about that day.

The accident had such a profound impact on the eighth pick of the 2017 draft that it is carrying over onto the football field as he prepares for his second NFL season.

He has made plans to pay for Smoker, who is back home in Cincinnati after two months of rehab in Colorado, and his family to attend Carolina’s Sept. 23 game against the Bengals at Bank of America Stadium.

“You see something like that, you definitely have a better appreciation for life, and you take every moment in and can’t take anything for granted,” McCaffrey said before the Panthers departed for their last break before training camp. “We had a little decompression time after that where we just looked at life, and you realize it can really be gone in a split second, and you have to appreciate every single moment.”

What happened on that hike made such an impression on McCaffrey that he has shared it with running backs coach Jim Skipper and teammates, and he hasn’t hesitated to say it’s the most unusual thing that has happened during an offseason in which he got a new offensive coordinator and is adjusting to a new scheme.

“It does remind you how fickle life can be,” Skipper said. “There ain’t no guarantee of tomorrow.”

Not that McCaffrey has worked any harder this offseason than last because of the accident. According to coaches and teammates throughout his career, McCaffrey always gives maximum effort. But he is practicing with more of a purpose than ever, in part because of the accident and in part because he’s determined to meet expectations from a year ago that he fell short of in terms of being the most dynamic back in his draft class.

The former Stanford star is practicing with more confidence after a full offseason with the team, unlike a year ago, when he missed offseason workouts because of a rule that prohibits a rookie from joining a team before his college semester ends.

“He sees everything clearly,” Skipper said. “He sees the defense. He knows the protections. So all it’s done is elevate his game because he can play quicker.”

‘New team, new me’

Jonathan Stewart set the bar high for McCaffrey early in training camp a year ago.

“He’s pretty unstoppable as far as coming out of the backfield and running routes,” the Pro Bowl running back said. “I can tell you now there’s not going to be anybody in this league that can cover him one-on-one. He’s a special player.”

McCaffrey was special in that he led the Panthers in receptions, with 80 for 651 yards and five touchdowns. But because Stewart remained the featured back and injuries at receiver forced McCaffrey to play a bigger role in the slot, the 5-foot-10, 205-pound back was limited to 435 yards rushing on 117 carries.

“He didn’t have a great year,” Skipper said. “He didn’t have a bad one, either.”

The Panthers expect more out of McCaffrey in 2018. Stewart was released, elevating McCaffrey to the featured back role, even though former Denver standout C.J. Anderson was signed in free agency.

Coach Ron Rivera said there’s no reason McCaffrey can’t reach 200 carries, referring to how new offensive coordinator Norv Turner has used featured backs in the past.

Skipper wouldn’t put a number on McCaffrey’s carries. He also wouldn’t limit the expectations.

“All you want with football is put the ball in the playmakers’ hands,” he said. “So in some kind of way, he’s going to get his touches.”

The confidence he saw in McCaffrey throughout offseason workouts makes Skipper more confident that McCaffrey can be the every-down back he was at Stanford, where in 2015 he broke Barry Sanders’ NCAA single-season record for all-purpose yardage (3,250). Skipper doesn’t see Turner overloading McCaffrey with responsibilities as sometimes happened a year ago.

“When he got here, he was rushing through everything,” said Skipper, reminding again that McCaffrey missed most of organized team activities in 2017. “He never relaxed because everything was boom, boom, boom, boom. It was all new on him.

“Now he can catch his breath. He’s seeing things clearer, he’s playing faster, he’s playing with more confidence. All he has to do is carry it over and have a little more success once we start preseason, and it’ll go from there.”

McCaffrey, in typical fashion, brushed off how he will do with an expanded role.

“Not up to me, man,” he said. “I just show up every day. Everybody on the team wants the ball as much as possible, but that’s football. You should want to compete. We’re here to win football games, so whatever that means, whatever that takes, that’s what we’re going to do.”

McCaffrey also isn’t looking back at his rookie season because he has a new coordinator and a lot of new weapons around him.

“I watched all the film from last year to see what I can improve on,” he said. “I’ve moved on. It’s a new team, new me.”

Great expectations

Smoker has watched most of McCaffrey’s interviews since his accident. He has been impressed by what he has seen and heard.

“I didn’t even know who Christian was before this, so I’ve learned a lot about him,” he said. “He’s somebody with very high integrity, and I look forward to meeting him.”

Smoker remains in physical therapy, but he has come a long way. He has been out of a wheelchair for four weeks and, after several weeks of working with a walker, can get around with a cane now.

He can’t wait until September to walk up to McCaffrey in Charlotte and personally thank him for being so fast to call 911 and help stabilize him after the accident.

The longtime Bengals fan might even pull for the Panthers. He’ll definitely pull for McCaffrey.

“The Bengals haven’t been doing well the last two or three years,” Smoker said with a laugh. “They better shape up, or I might have to start rooting for the Panthers. I’ll for sure be rooting for Christian and anything he does.”

Although Hundley kept the Packers on the fringes of playoff contention with three wins after Rodgers broke his collarbone, coach Mike McCarthy’s postseason assessment that even in his third year Hundley “wasn’t ready for what he needed to be ready for” told all.

No wonder the Packers traded for DeShone Kizer in March.

Yet here are the Packers, with their offseason program completed and training camp just five weeks away, and they can’t feel much better about their backup quarterback situation than they did when McCarthy made that bold statement at the combine. A spring’s worth of individual workouts, OTA practices and an entire minicamp without Rodgers (who was excused from the final week of the offseason program) did little to convince anyone the Packers have a capable fill-in quarterback.

It will be a competition to see who backs up Rodgers this season, but if the winner doesn’t show marked improvement, then it won’t matter who has the job, because the Packers once again could be in trouble if either one had to play.

To be sure, both Hundley and Kizer had their moments in last week’s minicamp: Hundley led a touchdown drive in a 2-minute drill with a 22-yard corner route to rookie receiver Equanimeous St. Brown, while Kizer hit Jake Kumerow on a 44-yard go route during his turn in the same drill. But the overall body of work included myriad missed throws and would-be sacks for holding the ball too long — problems that plagued Hundley in his nine starts last season and Kizer in his 15 last year for the winless Browns.

“The confidence is here now,” Kizer said near the conclusion of minicamp. “Now, it’s about going out and showing that I can be a consistent quarterback. It’s kind of universally known that the ability is there and the potential is there. Now, it’s about going out every day and every rep and proving myself.”

That will have to come in training camp and the preseason for the Packers to feel better about Kizer, who led the NFL with 22 interceptions and ranked last in completion percentage (53.6 percent). One NFL coach familiar with Kizer called him a “total rebuild” and wondered what the Browns were coaching last season.

“I think this is a normal process that you go through,” McCarthy said of Kizer. “Really, the first two weeks is just all classroom. So that was really spent on the new language, a lot of the changes that we were making to the guys, to the existing veterans that were here, the comparables from prior offense to the new offense. And then really phase two was the first time really just starting to go through the installs. So, obviously the OTAs we were able to get through all eight of the installs.”

“It was an offseason of trying to make some corrections off of a tough first year,” Kizer said. “This is my opportunity to correct those. Obviously, in the position of being behind Aaron, you can’t expect to go out there and get game reps and prove your corrections there. This is my time to prove myself.”

All of the changes that Cousins experienced came with the territory — moving on to the next chapter of his career after six years with the Washington Redskins. That didn’t mean the transition would always appear seamless.

Cousins felt the spring offseason was “a bit like drinking through a fire hose,” given the amount of new information he had to process and execute in expedited fashion. At the forefront of learning a scheme designed around his strengths, Cousins’ first few months in the Twin Cities centered on building continuity with his offensive line and skill players.

Cementing that connection is a drawn-out process that takes longer to perfect than several weeks of OTAs and minicamp. Finding a common ground between the way his receivers like to run routes and the way Cousins has executed throws to his offensive weapons in the past was where it all started when the quarterback invited Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs down to Atlanta for an impromptu throwing session in early April. Those conversations continued to evolve during the spring as Cousins was able to expand upon that chemistry in full practices and leave feeling all parties were on the same page.

“It’s a process of saying, ‘Hey, this is the way I’ve done if for six years. You’ve done it a different way for five years. Let’s try to talk about why you’ve had success, why I’ve had success. Let’s find some middle ground, let’s decide whether I’m going to learn your way, you’re going to learn my way,'” Cousins said. “That’s the process I’m talking about. Every route, every concept, really we could talk about each individual one. The best part of the whole thing is you know you have a chance when the communication is as healthy as it is.

“[Thielen is] receptive to listening; I can understand what he’s getting at. It’s the same with Stef. That’s where when I say I’m really excited about the locker room and the players I work with, it’s moments like that, where I feel really good about the communication, that they’re hearing you and you’re hearing them.”

During the six weeks until the Vikings report back for training camp at the end of July, Cousins will work to perfect the balance between relaxing and staying mentally prepared. Though he doesn’t have any concrete plans in place to work with his receivers in the summer, he will dedicate his efforts to the areas of the offense he didn’t grasp the first time around.

“I think the more important level of communication will be between me and the coaches, talking about some philosophy things and how I want plays to be designed,” Cousins said. “I’ll have my iPad with me as I go home, and I’ll spend time every day going back.

“All the stuff I didn’t catch, go back through and see that I had starred this, I had checkmarked this as something to go back to when we had time rather than take time when we were so busy.”

“I’m going to go back, I’ll make a list,” he continued, “probably get on the phone with [offensive coordinator] Coach [John] DeFilippo or [quarterbacks] Coach [Kevin] Stefanski and email and just go through it all to get each question answered over the summer.”

Because he feels like he’s “a little behind the eight ball,” Cousins’ summer plans include ample time in the playbook each day to prevent losing the knowledge and muscle memory he has built up in a short amount of time. But if there’s anything his first six years in the NFL have taught him, it’s the importance of pushing back at this time of year to prevent burnout.

“Last year, we got to like Week 2 and because of how much I was grinding all camp and even in the summer, I felt like we were in Week 12,” Cousins said. “I couldn’t believe that we were only in Week 2 because I had treated July and August like it was game day.”