The Panthers are in good shape with their special teams unit heading into the 2019 season thanks to The Specialists.
The Panthers’ 2018 season may not have turned out the way they wanted it to, but that wasn’t the fault of their special teams unit. (In fact, they beat the Giants in Week 5 thanks to a 63-yard field goal.) Because kickers and punters are everyone’s favorite topic to discuss, let’s take a closer look at what Graham Gano, Michael Palardy and J.J. Jansen offered the Panthers in 2018.
Kicker
Gano was the team’s kicker for the first 12 games of the season before suffering a season-ending knee injury. In those 12 games he was 14-for-16 in field goal attempts (87.5%) and 30-for-33 in extra point attempts (90.9%). One of his misses was from 30-39 yards while the other was from 50+. Gano’s most exciting kick in 2018 was the 63-yarder he nailed in the closing seconds to help the Panthers beat the Giants in Week 5.
Gano injured his knee in practice before the Panthers’ Week 14 game against the Browns and was placed on injured reserve two weeks later. Chandler Catanzaro was signed to fill in for Gano over the final four weeks of the season. Catanzaro was 5-for-5 in field goal attempts and 7-for-8 in extra points in his four weeks with the Panthers.
Heading into 2019 it’s Gano’s job to lose considering the amount of money the Panthers have tied into the position. I’m sure the coaching staff will bring someone into training camp to ‘push Gano’ during the preseason, but unless he injures himself or completely forgets how to kick a football it’s almost a guarantee that Gano will be the Panthers’ kicker in 2019.
Punter
Palardy was rewarded in 2018 with a three-year contract extension worth $7.5 million after setting a franchise record for net punting average in 2017.
Palardy, the Panthers’ punter since midway through the 2016 season, set a franchise record with a 42.4-yard net punting average in 2017 along with a gross average of 46.0.
So far this season, Palardy’s net average has inched up to 42.7 and his gross average is at 45.9. Eight of his 14 punts have pinned opponents inside the 20-yard line, a 57-percent success rate that is the best among the 10 punters with at least eight punts inside the 20.
The Panthers will have Palardy’s services until the end of the 2021 season, so it’s safe to say that he will be dropping bombs for Carolina in 2019. While he’s no Brad Nortman, it’s nice that the Panthers have a quality punter who can flip the field if needed for the next few years.
Long snapper
Jansen’s name doesn’t come up very often in discussions about the Panthers, and that’s just the way he would like it. Normally, you don’t know who the long snapper is unless he’s really bad at his job, and the fact that you never see or hear anything about Jansen says a lot about how good he is at whippin’ the football back to Palardy. Jansen is under contract until 2020 at just over $1 million per year, so there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll be on the roster for the duration of the contract.
What’s next?
We shouldn’t expect to see any changes heading into the 2019 season. All three players are under reasonably affordable contracts (well, maybe not Gano... but he’s here whether we like it or not) and provided enough value in 2018 to keep them around for at least another year. Other than the minor issue of Gano being slightly overpaid, the Panthers are in good shape with their specialists. They have a good long snapper, a good punter and a good kicker. Hopefully that continues to be true in 2019 and beyond.
Author’s note: Despite what Gano, Palardy and Jansen may have accomplished on the field in 2018, nothing will ever top the moment they became The Specialists. Nothing.
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