Special teams players for the Carolina Panthers are preparing for the challenges posed by weather and stadium design as they get ready to play at Lambeau Field this Sunday. The intricacies of wind patterns, particularly in outdoor stadiums, require constant adjustment and a deep understanding of each venue.
Panthers punter Sam Martin described how wind behaves differently depending on altitude inside a stadium. “It might be a right to left on the field, and then you get the ball 50 feet in the air and it’s actually a left to right, so you might feel it right to left on the field and think you’ve got to hit a left ball, but in reality, if you just get it through that first shelf, it gets up and it might fall right.”
Long snapper JJ Jansen emphasized that familiarity with a home stadium can help, but half of their games take place in unfamiliar environments. “I think there’s always a little bit of an advantage to kicking in stadiums where you’re familiar,” Jansen said. “That being said, we play half of our games in unfamiliar terrains, and every game presents its own new challenges.”
Martin explained that even at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, conditions can be unpredictable. “Even like our stadium specifically, like back in the end zones, it’s always way worse than it is once you get up to like the field,” he said. He added that wind swirls over the top of the stadium before whipping down onto the field.
Jansen pointed out another challenge: “In our stadium, the wind always goes opposite the flags at the top of the stadium. So you might feel on the field the opposite, but that’s not what the wind’s really doing in the air.”
Both Martin and Jansen have accumulated experience over their combined decades in professional football. They now use this knowledge to help rookie kicker Ryan Fitzgerald adapt to new venues.
“Most stadiums have tendencies. I don’t really remember Lambeau’s,” Martin admitted about his former division rival’s home field. He noted that some places are more difficult than others: “Lambeau’s obviously not great. It’s cold in there and gets windier. Buffalo is definitely the worst.” He also observed that weather forecasts outside often do not reflect conditions inside: “I always think it’s funny when, like, the forecast is like, 9 mph wind. I’m like, yeah, in the parking lot, it’s a little different inside here.”
Jansen shared advice passed down from special teams coach Chris Tabor about playing at Chicago’s Soldier Field: “There’s a flag outside the stadium that you can see through this little window from our bench that’s the true wind of how the wind is playing in the field…He kicked in there so often he knew to look at [it].”
Special teams coordinator Tracy Smith prepares his players by getting them acclimated as soon as they arrive for away games: “We’ll walk outside…so he’ll know what general conditions are,” Smith explained regarding Fitzgerald’s preparation process.
Smith added that specialists get an hour before each game to practice kicks under actual game-day conditions—a crucial time for assessing unique factors such as lake-effect winds found in cities like Green Bay or Buffalo.
Jansen clarified that long snappers focus mainly on ground-level winds: “I’m very generically judging…the wind below…10 feet matters to me.” In contrast, punters must account for varying wind layers across different parts of each field.
Martin detailed his approach: “There are different types of punts I can hit and seeing which ones respond best with which winds and what part of the field…you kind of break up into sections…and then once whistle blows…either it works or it doesn’t.”
Asked whether years on special teams amount to expertise akin to meteorology degrees, Martin laughed off any suggestion: “It’s such a feel thing…it’s literally just trial and error.” Adjustments include altering punt height based on headwinds or tailwinds during warm-ups.
The Panthers’ specialists will put these strategies into practice Sunday against Green Bay as autumn winds pick up across outdoor NFL venues.
“If you kick well, you hit the ball well,” Jansen concluded. “For most part—the wind doesn’t affect most kicks if you strike it really well.”
