After he finished each of his first two seasons on the bench, Josh Norman’s confidence could be a bit fragile. But the cornerback claims differently.

“My confidence is always high,” Norman said Sunday. “Never do I think anyone’s going to take me over the top and whip my tail the whole entire day. I’m always going to be over the top. I’m going to be that dominant guy, regardless of what anybody else says or thinks.”

The 26-year-old, who missed six practices after tweaking his hamstring at Fan Fest, returned to the field Saturday. But can he stay on it? Not just health-wise, but as a Panther?

Norman has shown flashes of brilliance, most notably in the preseason the last couple years, but the Coastal Carolina product needs the light to stay on after the season starts.

“He’s a young guy that came from a small program. When he’s playing with confidence, he’s pretty doggone good,” Ron Rivera said.

Cornerbacks Antoine Cason and Melvin White have taken the majority of first-team snaps all summer, but Norman has enough talent to eventually play his way back into the starting lineup.

Coaches and fans may need to see actual and consistent production before they trust in him again, but Norman certainly believes in himself.

“You got to be, man. You look at the likes of the top corners in the league – (Richard) Sherman and Patrick Peterson – you got to think about it. They’re on an island. They’re going to be confident. They have to be.”

You almost felt bad for the kid. The spotlight was shining brightly on defensive end Kony Ealy for about five minutes at the end of Saturday’s spirited practice, and not in a good way. Or so it seemed.

The day after he was taunted by a number of offensive players, including quarterback Cam Newton, Ealy claimed it was all good.

“I liked it. It was something that got my blood pumping,” Ealy said Sunday.

The second-round pick had trouble getting past raw Canadian tackle David Foucault, something Newton and the others noticed. Among other things, they yelled to Ealy that he was tired.

He may have been, and he appeared that way Sunday, when he again saw increased snaps in place of injured ends Charles Johnson and Greg Hardy. But Ron Rivera believes the attention on Ealy is more about his teammates showing tough love than being tough on him.

Newton, in particular, pulled the rookie aside Saturday. After a brief chat, they exchanged a handshake and a half-hug.

“I understand what the message was with Cam. It was nothing personal at all. Actually, I take it positively,” Ealy said. “Cam was doing it to bring the best out of me. He didn’t mean nothing bad about that.”

The Panthers have had nine training camp practices. If Cam Newton hasn’t been the last player off the field for each, he’s at least been one of the final guys to leave.

Some of it has been about conditioning. Newton’s March ankle surgery forced him to sit out offseason workouts, and he’s trying to work himself into shape.

Some of it has been about getting his timing down with his new receivers.

Some of it has been a fourth-year quarterback taking control of what is clearly his offense.

“It’s also a product of him trying to be a leader,” Ron Rivera said. “It’s him saying, ‘Hey guys, let’s work on this. Let’s get better at these things.'”

Even while he sat out four practices with a knee bruise, Kelvin Benjamin was arguably the most-impressive player at camp. The offense, and Cam Newton specifically, wasn’t as sharp without the Panthers’ first-round pick. And if it seems like someone’s raving about the 23-year-old every day, it’s because someone usually is.

Sunday, it was Greg Olsen’s turn.

“We need Kelvin to come in and be everything he’s been for this first week,” Olsen said. “He doesn’t have the luxury of redshirting and bringing him along slowly. He needs to be a guy that’s going to come in and be a focal part of our offense, and I think that’s been made pretty clear. I think he embraces that, and his results have kind of spoken for themselves.”

Olsen added a few of side jobs to his analyst résumé this summer, so you’ll hear and see more of him this season. He sure sounded the part when describing his early impressions of Benjamin.

“A guy like him makes a lot of things look easier than maybe they would be to other guys. He’s so big; he covers so much ground, a lot of times you don’t even know if he’s really running, but he’s eating up so much dirt. I haven’t seen him double catch a ball yet. I think he has really good eye-hand coordination, and tracking the ball and making hard catches look easy. So again, he’s everything you’d want when you draft a wide receiver in the first round.”

While the Panthers have Monday off, Greg Hardy may be back in court. It’s unclear if he’s required to appear at the arraignment for his domestic violence case. A judge is expected to set a date for Hardy’s jury trial, which will likely be pushed onto the court’s schedule for 2015.