Fitzgerald learned, as most rookies do, that having an entire offseason entering his second season has given him a chance to improve that he didn’t have last year. Instead of going to pre-draft workouts and the combine and trying to find a home, he has settled into the routine here. So he feels stronger, which should only help.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, having an actual offseason this year was huge,” he said. “I mean, coming into OTAs, my legs feel great, feel fresher than they’ve ever been before, and just working with (director of performance) Josh Hingst in the weight room, just getting stronger.<\/p>\n
“I feel more explosive. My numbers are up across the board, so we’ll just keep going.”<\/p>\n
He’s also getting ready to build a new life, getting engaged this offseason and setting a July 3, 2026, wedding date. (In the NFL, early July weddings are common because everyone knows when training camp starts.)<\/p>\n
And with the benefit of veterans in his meeting room at work, particularly long snapper JJ Jansen<\/a> and holder Sam Martin<\/a>, he has the chance to continue to learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fitzgerald learned, as most rookies do, that having an entire offseason entering his second season has given him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[79,235,260,2567,7,81,6,236,18001],"class_list":["post-936251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-carolina-panthers","tag-app-news","tag-carolina","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-carolinapanthers","tag-football","tag-latest-news","tag-nfl","tag-panthers","tag-spotlight"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116860598545083330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}