Season opener in Minnesota will have an empty feeling
GREEN BAY - They will line up in the tunnel Sunday morning, a few minutes before noon, and the adrenaline will flow. The music will blast through speakers. The lights and cameras will flash.
In that moment, the game-day experience inside U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota will sound exactly like they remember. A public address announcer will introduce them. The video scoreboard will project them. They will flood the field, running as fast as their legs can carry, not stopping until they reach the sideline, or maybe the end zone. Some will bob and sway, staying loose. Others will kneel in prayer.
Then, inevitably, they will look up. It’s unclear when Sunday’s reality will hit the Green Bay Packers, that they are about to play a football game with their opponent alone, but it’s the visual of an empty stadium that will be inescapable. What will happen Sunday, when the Packers and Minnesota Vikings play with no fans in
the stands because of precautions against the spread of COVID-19, will be historic. A foreign sensation for players accustomed to playing in front of overflowing high school bleachers, rowdy college fans and roaring NFL stadiums.
“The moment you’re most aware of it,” defensive lineman Dean Lowry said, “is either before the game or after the game, because you run out on the field and you see the fans and it gets you going. Once that first snap is in, you’re sort of locked in and you kind of tune it out. I would say it’s definitely going to affect the overall game-day feel of things, and it won’t be as energetic, but it’s important to be, more than ever, a self-starter and get yourself going.”
The Packers already started adjusting to the oddity of playing football without fans. The doors to Ray Nitschke Field were locked in August. Only reporters and scouts filled the stands alongside the Packers’ annual training camp home.
It was a surreal setting, but nothing like what awaits Sunday. Baseball games might be played with scarcely a fan presence, especially at the youth level. In basketball, several AAU games sometimes cram into the same facility, diluting fan attention.
Football is different. From the time players were young, they were watched. Which is why Sunday will be so different than anything they’ve experienced before.
“We’ve got to bring our own juice,” outside linebacker Za’Darius Smith said.
The “D train” will remain this season, even if nobody is present to watch the Packers’ post-sack celebrations live. Players will hype themselves like always. They’ll feed their energy off each other, not the crowd.
There will be noise. NFL teams are allowed to pipe a maximum 70 decibels into the stadium. That will be the same next week when the Packers open their home schedule against the Detroit Lions without fans at Lambeau Field. But the 70 decibels will be a far cry to the usual rumble of a Sunday crowd. It isn’t even half the record 142.2 decibels registered at Arrowhead Stadium during a Kansas City Chiefs game against the New England Patriots in 2014.
Seventy decibels is listening to a vacuum cleaner. It’s a car passing you at 65 mph from 25 feet away. At 140 decibels, you’re listening to a plane take off while standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Yes, the absence of fans will affect the game. At no place will the change be more pronounced than at the line of scrimmage.
At 70 decibels, Aaron Rodgers said, the Packers offense will not need to use a silent snap count Sunday, something that’s practically a given each season when they travel to the Vikings, who play indoors.
“It will be strange,” Rodgers said. “I think there will be new types of strategy involved. I think the metaphorical jazz hands will be the understanding that everything you say now is heard by the TV, as you’ve seen with some of these hot mics in golf or on the basketball court.
“There’s just kind of a lot more information out there, so there’s going to be a need to change code words probably more often than years past.”
The Packers already constantly update their pre-snap verbiage, trying to stay ahead of opposing defenses. There is an assortment of real and fake calls, terms heard more at home than on the road, where silent snap counts are prevalent. Now the Packers might need to recycle their snap lingo more frequently.
It’s not all bad for the offense. In fact, defenses playing a cerebral quarterback such as Rodgers might be at a disadvantage. Even in a full stadium, Rodgers’ hard count is a weapon. He can get even the most patient defensive linemen to jump, giving the Packers free plays.
With less noise, defenders will need to be more disciplined than ever.
Outside linebacker Preston Smith thinks the absence of noise levels the playing field. Both sides can hear what’s being said on the field. The key, Smith said, will be preparing the right way.
“When you make checks,” Smith said, “you have to make sure those are the right checks. Or if the offense is making checks, you have to make sure everything you studied is right, and it’s not being changed. You have to kind of play and make sure that everything you studied is on key. There’s going to be a lot of checks you’re going to face each week in and week out, with cadences and calls you hear and them hearing calls and trying to be silent, because you can’t play the game silent.”
The road team still faces disadvantages. Safety Adrian Amos said there’s benefit to not needing to travel, especially during a pandemic. The comfort of home helps maintain a routine.
There will be little else familiar with the Packers’ routine Sunday at Minnesota. At least until the game starts.
“If I see Z make a play,” Preston Smith said, “I’m going to be just as hyped as he is, and same with the secondary. They’re just as hyped when they see us get sacks and do our dance, or we celebrate. Guys feed off each other. So we’ve just got to bring that contagious — that good, contagious energy — and make sure we come out there with the juice.”