The Carolina Panthers may have been in sensory overload the last time they took a road trip. Their Week 3 visit to Seattle had them hearing a ton of noise, seeing a lot of yellow and tasting another defeat.
Unfortunately, their next away game may not be much different.
Buy Panthers TicketsHead coach Frank Reich spoke with reporters following this afternoon’s practice session, the last before Week 5’s matchup with the Detroit Lions. And Reich knows they’ll be facing just more than the 50 or so players at Ford Field on Sunday.
“It’s gonna be a great environment up there in Detroit,” he told reporters on Friday. “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.”
It certainly wasn’t flawless in that 37-27 loss to the Seahawks, where the Panthers were charged with eight false-start penalties. Reich called the performance, one clearly affected by Seattle’s raucous fans, “inexcusable” and “pathetic.”
So, being that Detroit is Motor City rockin’ over their lovable Lions, Reich confirmed that the offense has made some changes in how they’ll go about lining up.
“We’ve made a few small tweaks in our operation,” he said when asked of making any adjustments. “We have.”
