FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Coming into Week 4, the Panthers' special teams unit had been the talk of the NFL. And why not? On kickoffs, the group had held opponents to an average starting field position of the 21.2-yard line, the second-best mark in the league behind the Rams. Kicker Ryan Fitzgerald was a perfect 5-5 on extra points and field goals, with a long of 57 yards made last week in the win over the Falcons.

And the punt team had allowed only 36 yards on three punt returns, the nine-yard average 11th best in the league.

But on Sunday, that side of the ball had two early miscues that set the tone for the entire game.

"As good as we played last week, we obviously played equally bad today," admitted long snapper JJ Jansen.

The Panthers' offense, on the opening possession, marched down the field easily against the Patriots, scoring on a seven-play, 72-yard drive. When Fitzgerald tried for the point after, though, it doinked off the left upright.

The Panthers' defense held New England to a three-and-out on the ensuing drive, but when Carolina was forced to punt after their next possession, the Patriots took control. Sam Martin booted a high-flying end-over-end punt that Marcus Jones caught around the New England 13-yard line. Two defenders were there waiting at the catch to make the tackle.

Jones tried to cut right, got his feet wrapped up, and stepped out of the tackle. He cut towards the left sideline, and by then, he had a wall of blockers. No one in Panthers colors was able to track him down, and he rode in the rest of the way for the 87-yard touchdown.

"After he gets the ball in his hands, he's elusive," said Akayleb Evans, who was on the field for the return. "We've just got to do a better job of getting him down, gang tackling him, he's a hard guy to tackle one-on-one, we saw that."

The next time the Panthers punted, Jones made them pay again, grabbing the left sideline again and almost recreating his first return. This time, Martin was able to box him out and trip him up, saving another return for a touchdown. Jones still brought it back 61 yards on that return, though, and the Patriots punched it in four plays later to go up 28-6.

"They were clearly working some sort of wall return or sideline return," noted Jansen. "It stinks because I thought Sam hit the ball really well all day, and the guys were covering hard and playing hard, just didn't execute in the coverage lanes. We've got to get him on the ground, and it hurt the team, and that really that part stunk.

"(It) was a six-man return, double the gunners, which can be really tough, and you get a little, you can get out leveraged from time to time. Again, I haven't seen that, so I couldn't tell you exactly what happened or where we would necessarily say, hey, that was the mistake, but obviously they got to the sideline and Sam actually did a really good job of getting him down to avoid another catastrophe."

Of note, Jansen added, wide receivers David Moore, Brycen Tremayne, and Dalevon Campbell are usually a part of the gunner package. Moore was injured on the first play of the game, Campbell was injured in the second quarter, and Tremayne saw less time due to an uptick in offensive snaps.

"Everyone out there has worked at gunner, but David Moore is one of our very best plug-and-play guys on offense and special teams. Shoot, I swear he could probably play defense," said Jansen. "Like he's just, he's one of those guys that plays really well, and he'd be a gunner."

In total, Jones returned three punts for 167 yards and a score. Coming into the game, the Panthers were holding punt returners to the 11th-lowest return average, 9.0 yards per return, and Jones was averaging around that, at 8.7 yards per return. His output on Sunday, though, was the seventh-highest in the NFL since 2000.

"That's unacceptable," said Evans when told the stat. "We've got to look in the mirror."

Added Thomas Incoom , "He ain't doing nothing we haven't seen on film, you know, we just took bad leverages and we just got to do better the following week just practicing leverage and stuff like that, but we good. I know we're going to watch the mistakes."

In the midst of the punt return issues, Fitzgerald also missed a 55-yard field goal that would have made it a five-point game if it were good. It comes just one week after the rookie kicker tied the second-longest field goal in franchise history with a 57-yarder.

The fact that this is only Fitzgerald's fourth game in the league, though, Jansen said, means the outside narrative treats every game as a referendum on Fitzgerald's ability. For those teammates who had been with him all offseason, this was an obstacle, not an insurmountable one.

"Ryan's been excellent for us," preached Jansen. "Part of the reason why he's the kicker coming out of training camp and wins that competition is because he demonstrates incredible resilience. He demonstrates a ton of confidence. There was no blinking going out there for 55 today.

"Obviously, he didn't probably hit his best ball. I'll let him speak to that, but we just have a ton of confidence in him, and he's got resilience and toughness and confidence that you need in that position.

"But he's a really, really good kicker, and he'll be doing this for a long time. We've got a lot of confidence in him."

Now the challenge becomes flushing this performance and moving on, something much easier said than done, but a mindset that athletes live by. The Panthers return home for Week 5, 1-0 in their division, and the Miami Dolphins are on deck.

"What's disappointing, I think, for our group specifically on teams, is we played really, really well last week, and the challenge to us was, 'Hey, can we back up a good week with another good week?'

"We didn't do that. Now the expectation is, 'Hey, next week, how do we go reset it, impact the team positively, and then stack successes together. If the special teams play really, really well, our team's going to win ball games because we believe that we're tone setters for the team.

"It got away from us today. That's a huge element that we've got to correct inside of our own room, but we've got a really good core of guys that we're really proud of. And so that's going to be the challenge going next week for Miami."