OT: pin your ears back

Submitted by notetoself on

I've noticed that football announcers have taken to saying that when defenses need to focus and get to work that they need to "pin their ears back". I did a bit of googling to find the origin of the phrase, thinking that maybe it was rooted in something offensive (e.g. ethnic slur) and instead of finding that, I've found that it's quite possible that they are using the phrase completely incorrectly. The most common definition I found was that it meant severely beating someone (i.e. He talked about mgopoints so they pinned his ears back).

I've never heard the phrase outside of football announcing (sort of like "nothing doing") so: what say you? Is it at all sensical to say that a defense needs to "pin its ears back"?