Carolina Panthers make 'tweaks' to prepare for Lions crowd
Carolina is making some slight changes in an attempt to prepare for a raucous environment on Sunday. The Panthers, still searching for their first win, head to Ford Field for a showdown with a tough Lions team (3-1) in Week 5 of the NFL season.
Head coach Frank Reich expects Lions fans to be out in full force, causing problems for the Panthers offense. He says the key is to prepare for a loud environment in an effort to eliminate some of the pre-snap penalties.
“It’s gonna be a great environment up there in Detroit,” Reich said, per USA TODAY. “It’ll be loud. That team’s hot, they’re rockin’. You watch the tape and you see other teams struggling with their procedure in-game because of the noise. You see delay of games, you see pre-snap penalties. On tape, you see a bunch of ’em in that stadium. So, I think we worked hard at it this week and put that to work.
“We wanna go up there, we wanna eliminate as many as the self-inflicted stuff as we can. Sometimes, it might not be completely flawless, but I know we can be better than we’ve been.”
When asked if the team made any adjustments in this week’s preparation, Reich said Carolina has “made a few small tweaks in our operation.”
Sunday’s game between the Panthers and Lions is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET and airs of FOX.
Panthers tried this before with Seattle
This isn’t the first time Carolina has tweaked some of its preparations for crowd noise. The Panthers made some changes in an attempt to prepare for the crowd noise for a Week 3 game against Seattle.
It didn’t work.
Instead of playing a clean game, the Panthers racked up 13 penalties for 82 yards in a 37-27 loss. Obviously, Carolina wants to avoid that same fate. Reich was not happy after the Seahawks loss.
“Coming in, we knew the environment would be tough—good football and a tough place to play,” he said, per PanthersWire. “The number of penalties was totally inexcusable, pathetic.
“That starts with me, as an offensive coach. That starts with our offense coaches—getting our players ready. And that starts with our players. Unacceptable. It’s like we never played in the noise before. We knew it was comin’, we practiced all week with noise. I mean, Wednesday it was so loud out there, you couldn’t even think.”
Maybe if the Panthers prepare for crowd noise enough, they’ll finally eliminate the mistakes.