The show goes on at Levi’s, and it’s very 2020
Without the usual roar of the crowd, flat 49ers fade in 24-20 loss to Arizona
SANTA CLARA >> Smoke filled the air, but it wasn’t coming from fans’ grills in the parking lot before the 49ers’ season opener.
There were no fans at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday.
Yet announcements explaining the protocol of entering the stadium were played over the loudspeakers anyway, bouncing around the empty grandstands. The atmosphere was eerie and uncomfortable. One could go as far as to say it was post-apocalyptic.
“That’s the 2020 season for you,” said 49ers running back Jerick McKinnon.
The NFL’s league’s unofficial motto for the 2020 season is “The Show Must Go On.”
Yes, even if there was no live, in-person audience.
A 100-year pandemic? Put on your shoulder pads.
Unhealthy air because of wildfires raging up and down the west coast? Strap on that helmet.
A new civil rights movement afoot? Just play this other song.
It seems as if nothing can stop the NFL from making television.
In the end, the Niners had a performance not worth disseminating in their first game of the year. They lost to the Arizona Cardinals 24-20.
San Francisco’s inconsistent offensive play and a few questionable penalty calls that went against their defense proved to be the difference. But you’d be hard-pressed to say that the sterilized environment — one that felt antithetical to the spirit of the gladiatorial spec
tacle — wasn’t a factor.
“It does kind of effect you when you’re out there and you don’t have the crowd,” 49ers running back Raheem Mostert said. “Our home opener, we wanted the fans to go crazy. We know that could have been a good part of the outcome.”
Instead, the only folks that were visible in the stands of Levi’s Stadium Sunday were photographers and yellow-jacketed security staff. They hardly created a home-field advantage. The security staffers had their backs to the field the entire game. They had to keep a close eye on the cardboard cutouts in the seats, just in case they came to life and became too rowdy.
In fact, there was no appreciable difference in the production around the game.
But so much of it was merely an effort to go through the motions — a foolhardy effort to create normalcy amid the most abnormal circumstances.
The 49ers, perhaps in turn, matched that energy of perfunctoriness on the field for significant stretches.
Or maybe the 49ers were zapped after the pregame politics.
That’s part of the show, now.
Roughly 30 minutes before the game’s scheduled start, there was a playing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — the unofficial “Black National Anthem — on the video screen.
The entire 49ers team — coaches, players, and staff members — stood along the south goal line to listen to the song, all while a Black Lives Matter flag few just to the right of the video screen they watched.
The 49ers then went back to their locker room, only to emerge minutes later to pyrotechnics and a video introduction of the starting offense.
The security guards did not seem excited.
After that, the U.S. National Anthem was played.
McKinnon and another 49ers player, Richie James, appeared to crouch on the sideline during the song.
The Cardinals remained in the locker room for both songs and the unnecessary intro. They decided that absenteeism was the best route to avoid political controversy. Smart choice.
The politics of the pregame and the Niners’ poor play in the season-opening loss will be dissected 1,000 different ways. But my main takeaway was how much a crowd can impact a game.
Like so many things in life, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I can tell you with certainty that the artificial fan noise that was pumped into the stadium did not affect anyone on the field the same way an even a half-full stadium of engaged fans would have.
Niners cornerback Richard Sherman said he could hear most of what the Cardinals were saying on the field. So much of that would have been drowned out by the home fans.
It might seem like an advantage that Sherman could hear them, but it cut both ways. The Cardinals could hear what the 49ers were saying, too. More importantly, the Cardinals could hear one another. They could communicate at a higher level than normal for a visting team.
So much for home-field advantage.
“In terms of communicating with one another and hearing their communications, it was a cat-andmouse game,” Sherman said. “Everybody has the same circumstances. We deal with them.”
Another point that was hammered home in the strangest home opener in 49ers history:
Football is a brutal game.
I tell anyone who cares to know that being on the field during an NFL game is a harrowing experience. It might be a bucket-list item for some, but let me assure you, it will change the way you see the game, oftentimes not for the better. Players that big moving that fast, without regard for others’ bodies or their own, will fill your arteries with fear, even at a distance.
What I didn’t realize is that even the unfiltered, unmastered sounds of the game would do the same thing.
On television, the ferocity of the sport was covered up by that fake crowd noise. But in the stadium, it came through clear as day. The 49ers went as far as to pump the audio from the microphones on the field play in the press box during the game. The not-safe-for-all-audiences onfield commentary was oftentimes funny. The jarring cracks of hard-plastic collisions was anything but comical.
The 49ers have not yet determined if fans will be allowed into Levi’s Stadium for their next home game, a Sunday night special Oct. 4 against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Perhaps Sunday was a one-off. I hope that’s the case.
Or maybe this is the new normal. The smoke will eventually clear, but the cloud of uneasiness and peculiarity will indefinitely hang over Levi’s Stadium.
Either way, the show must go on.