At a time when the NFL is changing kickoff rules to give offenses better field position, the Panthers are the best team in the NFL at pinning their opponents deep: The average line of scrimmage after the Panthers\u2019 kickoffs this season has been the 21-yard line, ranking Carolina No. 1 in the league.<\/p>\n
Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel is preparing to face the Panthers on Sunday, and he spent an inordinate amount of his film study time this week trying to figure out how the Panthers do it so well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s impressive,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cI sat there and looked at it for two hours last night. Impressive. They\u2019ve got good players, they\u2019ve got great speed. They change the scheme up on you. And so that\u2019ll be critical that we\u2019re able to protect the guy with the ball. They\u2019re flying. And it starts with the kicker, kicks a good kick, dirty kick. So, he\u2019s had the returners sometimes confused. He\u2019s kicking them when he kicks them deep. They\u2019re right at the goal line, forcing you to return them, or last week a couple times they touched it, took a step back and then had it on the 20 yard line. So, they\u2019ve done a fantastic job. Credit to their staff and to the players.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vrabel\u2019s use of the word \u201cdirty\u201d in discussing the Panthers\u2019 kickoffs has led to some misleading headlines and social media posts suggesting that Vrabel was accusing the Panthers of somehow cheating to gain an advantage on kickoffs. That is not what he was saying. Vrabel was asked to define the term \u201cdirty kick\u201d and he made clear that it\u2019s a term he uses to describe a kick that lands in the landing zone and is difficult to return.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne that\u2019s on the ground in between the 20 and the goal line,\u201d Vrabel said when asked what a dirty kick is. \u201cSometimes it one hops and they can return it, sometimes it kicks and goes sideways and we\u2019ll have to be prepared for that wherever they kick it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vrabel knows his return team has to be prepared for the best kickoff unit in the NFL on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when the NFL is changing kickoff rules to give offenses better field position, the Panthers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-172924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}