CHARLOTTE—"So, there's shelves," began Sam Martin, the Panthers' punter stacking his hands farther and farther up to explain the division of wind as it makes its way across a football field.

"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."

When this story began, it intended to analyze the difficulty of kicking and punting in a stadium like Lambeau Field, where the Panthers play Sunday in a Week 9 matchup, due to the completely circular and high nature of the structure, therefore causing the wind to bounce back and forth as it makes its way from the top of the stadium down to field level.

But it quickly became clear that the intricacies involved with this subject are prevalent week-to-week, from Charlotte to Green Bay and every other outdoor stadium in between.

"I think there's always a little bit of an advantage to kicking in stadiums where you're familiar," said long snapper JJ Jansen. "That being said, we play half of our games in unfamiliar terrains, and every game presents its own new challenges."

That includes Bank of America Stadium.

"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," explained Martin. "So you just try to figure out what is the best option, and you break the deal down however you need to, and then trust whatever you figured out, you came to a conclusion in the warm-up.

"I think it's more of a swirl (in Bank of America). It comes over the top and it's a swirl type thing, so it kind of whips, feeling like a whip."

Added Jansen, "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."

Over the years, between Martin's 13 years in the league and Jansen's 18 seasons, they've developed tips and tricks, things that come in handy for themselves and as they help rookie kicker Ryan Fitzgerald figure out a game plan each time he steps into a new stadium this season.

"Most stadiums have tendencies. I don't really remember Lambeau's," admitted Martin, who played in the NFC North for the first six years of his career, but left the division in 2020. "It's been a while, but I felt like I had Buffalo's down pretty well, what the tendency of the winds was doing there.

"Lambeau's obviously not great. It's cold in there and gets windier. Buffalo is definitely the worst. You get some tricky ones to Chicago as well. But, the majority of the stadiums, like if you stand outside the stadium and feel the wind, it's totally different 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."

The tricky part of Chicago, where the Panthers played as recently as last season, is knowing the one specific flag for which to look.

"The one thing that can be a little helpful is every once in a while you'll have a little tip where, like for instance, I'll give you a great example, Chris Tabor, when we went to Chicago, because he'd been there for so long, said ignore the flags inside the stadium," shared Jansen.

"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, and that's just—in that particular case, there was just the way the wind came in and out of the stadium. You got some bad tells off of flags and things like that. He kicked in there so often he knew to look at the flag that's sitting outside the stadium."

The Panthers' current special teams coordinator, Tracy Smith, has also been coaching in the NFL for over a decade. His tricks for getting his specialists ready, particularly in the case of a rookie kicker like Fitzgerald, are to start the night before when the team arrives in town.

"We'll walk outside, kind of the day before, a little bit, so he'll know what the general conditions are," explained Smith. "And then we'll go kick in the stadium. I mean, we get a whole hour to kick in the stadium before the game, so there's nothing like that for conditions on that day."

It's that hour, though, when things really get decided. In cities in the Midwest and Northeast, such as Green Bay, Chicago, and Buffalo, there is also the lake effect wind to contend with. That hour when no one but specialists are on the field is when each guy has to measure the shelves, as Martin explained, to figure out exactly how that stadium plays.

For Jansen, that shelf exists only near ground level.

"I'm not dealing with the same shelves of wind that these guys are dealing with," the snapper explained. "So like, for instance, I'm very generically judging the wind at ground level, only the wind below, let's call it 10 feet, matters to me.

"So these guys would certainly have little notebooks, mental notebooks of maybe how certain elements perform in each stadium. I tend to be far more aware of field conditions, things of that sort, just because that's kind of the environment that I'm dealing with."

For Martin, it's figuring out exactly where those "shelves" of wind are along the yard lines, and depending on whether he needs to kick a low, rugby-style punt, or a high, hang-time dependent punt.

"There are different types of punts I can hit and seeing which ones respond best with which winds and what part of the field, like punting from the 10-yard line going one way isn't the same as punting at the 40-yard line in that same direction," said Martin.

"So it's not just like, OK, this way I'm doing this and this way I'm doing this. You kind of break the field up into sections and go over that before the game, like in this area, I'm going to do this type, and it should do this. And then once the whistle blows, you kind of just have to trust your warm-up, and either it works or it doesn't."

It's such an intricate process that one has to wonder: Does a specialist need to have a background in meteorology? Or do they at least earn one over the years?

"No, no," laughed Martin. "It's such a feel thing, and it's like you can't think, it's such a feel thing, and it's literally just trial and error, like hitting—sometimes I'll purposely hit a more low ball, keep it out of a strong head wind. So, it's like if I go this way, it feels like the wind at my back is lower and in my face is higher. I'll purposely try to hit a lower ball to ride that wave on my back, and if you hit it a little too high, you'll see it kind of float down.

"That's what I mean by you just trial and error and say 'OK, this is a, see if I go a little higher. Oh, that hit a wall. I'm right here.'"

This will all be tested on Sunday, as the group heads into such a uniquely shaped stadium during a month where the wind will start to pick up. They'll have to rely on years of experience, and that precious hour in pregame to prepare their game, and act as a caddie to Fitzgerald.

In the end, though, once the game is kicked off, it only comes down to one factor.

"If you kick well, you hit the ball well," said Jansen, "for the most part, the wind doesn't affect most kicks if you strike it really well."