High decibel white noise. Rock music full blast. Prerecorded cheering. NFL coaches have always found a way, in the days leading up to a road game, to simulate the environment at an opponent’s stadium. Now, they use crickets.
Some NFL stadiums are louder than others, but every one of them, depending on the point in the game, can generate enough noise to make it impossible to hear the person next to you. For this reason, offensive football involves a variety of hand signals and silent snap counts. There are so many routes and route combinations that you really can’t get hand signals for all of them, which means, in a hostile environment, your ability to change the play is limited to whatever hand signals you have, and, more specifically, whatever hand signals you can remember. This means you keep it very simple, which helps the defense.
Simple also applies to the snap count in a loud stadium. Being able to work the line of scrimmage with a hard count is a home field luxury. A seasoned quarterback can drawn defenses off-sides with regularity, but not on the road, and not when the chips are down, because the crowd knows what’s at stake. When it is so loud that you can’t hear the snap count, like at Broncos games, the count is always on “one.” This allows the home defense to time up the count, often getting a better jump on the ball than the offense. Von Miller is a master at this.
Drew Lock admitted that he could have really used Broncos Country on that last Titans drive, when Rya Tannehill methodically diced up the Broncos defense en route to the game-winning field goal. I happen to agree with him. There’s no way 76,125 people would have let that happen.
Lock also wondered if he should have been whispering the play in the huddle so the Titans couldn’t hear it. That’s how quiet it felt to him. Think about that. Whispering in an NFL football stadium. That’s not the game day moment you dream about as a kid.
Bill Belichick summed it up last week in an interview. “Do these empty stadium games remind you of anything?” He was asked. “Practice,” he said. That is an accurate comparison.
Games are fun because it’s so loud you can’t hear the coaches. This is the reward for practicing all week in silence and having to be “coached up” on every play, and after every mistake. Game day is a chance to tune out all of the coaching and just go play. NFL players, aside from maybe the quarterback, don’t need game day coaching. They need to be left alone so they can be in the zone. The constant buzz of the crowd allows players to be enclosed in a bubble of their own performance. This new stadium silence prevents that escape.
Stadiums are trying to help, piping in a sort of crowd murmur that simulates the noises made by an expectant crowd. It’s better than nothing, but still odd. Artificial excitement creates a surreal environment less conducive to sacrificing your body. When you lay yourself out for transcendent football play, the fans reward you instantly. You understand immediately that what you did mattered. That your city loves you. But what about now? What fans? What city? Why are we even here?
Part of the joy I had as a player was soaking up the spite and vitriol directed at us from the opposition. Yelling, cursing, throwing things at us. These moments helped me understand the importance of the moment. If these people care this much about winning, then I want to crush their dreams. I want to make them cry.
Before a road game, Coach Mike Shanahan used to talk to us about how sweet it is to go into someone else’s backyard and make 70,000 people fall silent. There is no better feeling in sports. This new kind of silence doesn’t taste so good.
Nate Jackson is a former wide receiver/tight end for the Broncos. He lives in Denver and works part-time at 104.3 The Fan.
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