Just like anyone else, Panthers kicker Joey Slye has had to overcome adversity – both on and off the field.

On the field, Slye was unable to land with an NFL team last year after an uneven senior season at Virginia Tech as he converted only 68.2 percent of his field goal attempts – auditions with the Bucs and Giants both ended without a job. But Slye’s off the field adversity has been much more challenging to overcome.

Slye’s older brother A.J. died in 2014 at the age of 20 after a 14-month battle with leukemia. Dealing with different types of adversity has helped shaped Slye not only as a football player – but as a man.

“Adversity off the field is good to figure out who you are as a person,” Slye told The Riot Report after Panthers practice this week. “I think establishing and knowing who you are as a person will then leak onto the field. A lot of kickers are defined by how they kick and how they perform on the field. We are professionals. When someone asks you, what position do you play, who are you – ‘I’m a kicker.’ I [like to] start out with my name is Joey Slye – and I happen to kick in the NFL.”

“I know who I am. I’m not defined by how I kick – I’m defined by who I am as a person off the field. Once you have that confidence and understanding of who you are, a lot of times, that will bleed onto the field.”

“Adversity on and off the field are both going to help you grow. I think a lot of times, too, adversity on the field – if you’ve gone through it a couple of times – I think it makes you a better kicker as well.”

Each time he makes a field goal, Slye points six fingers to the sky every time as a tribute to his brother.

“With me and my brother, we played sports with each other literally since I was able to walk,” Slye said. “He was dying to get me to walk so I could play with him. A lot of times, I just try to get in that zone of being with my brother again – where a lot of that stuff gets blocked off, the fans go away, the situation goes away, it’s just me kicking with my brother or me being with my brother. I mean, I used to play baseball, and if my brother wasn’t on the team at the time and I would get flustered, my mom would just say – it’s just like playing catch with your brother.”

“I just think about that and just having him out there, it’s a calming effect. For me, I think about him, what we would be doing at this moment and kind of how he would be reacting to everything and [then I] get into that zone. A lot of people’s livelihoods are on the line, but it is still a game – it is still football. I learned that when I was 17 and it has continued to be in the back of my head since it happened.”

“So a lot of times, me being with him is just a calming effect for me.”

Throughout training camp, Slye has been competing with veteran Graham Gano for a spot on the Panthers 53-man roster. So far, things have worked out, well, perfectly for Slye – he is 6-for-6 on field goal attempts during the preseason, including a 55 and a 54-yard field goal, and has made both of his extra-point tries.

In the Panthers’ preseason-opening win against the Chicago Bears, Slye was one of the biggest surprises as he scored 11 of the Panthers’ points, converting three field goals and two extra points without a miss, one of which was a surprising 55-yarder that would have been good from 60 yards – the Bears coaching staff certainly took notice as the team is still searching for a kicker, leading to speculation that the Panthers may trade Slye to Chicago.

The next week in their loss to the Buffalo Bills, Slye was 2-for-2 on field goal attempts including knocking in a 54-yarder. Although Panthers coach Ron Rivera has been hesitant to say there’s a kicking battle brewing, Slye has made the case to be on the team’s final roster.

Gano, who missed the last four games of the 2018 season, has been battling a leg injury that has kept him out the entire preseason and is not expected to kick in the Panthers final preseason game – if the Panthers decide to release Slye, it’s almost certain he would be signed by one of the other 31 teams in the NFL, which means the Panthers have an interesting decision to make come this weekend when they must trim their roster from 90 to 53.. From the outside, many would think Slye is competing with Gano daily. But the 23-year-old says Gano is not his only competition.

“We are always competing against ourselves,” Slye said. “So if I have a good day, if I have a bad day, it is whatever it is, I’m just competing against myself. It’s never really me against him or anything like that, it’s me trying to go out and do my job and him trying to do his job. His job is [to] rehab, get healthy, get back to where he was – and my job is just to prove who I am as a kicker in the league and establish that as the expectation that I can uphold all the time.”

“Me and him have been really been cool off the field. It has been great to learn from someone that’s been in the league for so long.”

Whether Slye will be pointing six fingers to the sky in a Panthers uniform this fall or with another team remains to be seen, but one thing is certain – Slye has enjoyed the experience from training camp through the preseason and he says it has helped him become a better player as he hopes to one day become one of the best players at his position after his last extended period of kicking left him with a bad taste in my mouth.

“I wasn’t happy with what I produced at Virginia Tech the last couple of years,” Slye said. “Ultimately, I broke records and all types of stuff like that. Everyone is like, you still accomplished a lot, but it’s just frustrating because I feel like I didn’t reach my full potential when I was there. I had a lot of ability, and I showed it most of the time, it just sucks sometimes when it didn’t come to fruition during the game. I have continually learned my craft and when you have gone through some adversity with kicking and what I went through last year, and [now] everything has started to fit into place.”