Has No Attendance at Games Affected the Players' Performances This Season?
The Kansas City Cheifs had the luxury in their Week 1 game against the Houston Texans to play in front of a reduced number of fans but they weren't so fortunate the next week, as they traveled to Los Angeles and played in an empty stadium.
With the team traveling to an empty stadium in Baltimore this week, the question was asked, "Has the lack of actual crowd noise and presence really made that much of a difference in their performance?"
Michael Mithelavage proposed the question on today's Roughing the Kicker podcast with Arrowhead Report's Jordan Foote. On the episode, we discussed this question and many more sent in by listeners. Find out below how you can send your questions next week.
After Sunday's game against the Chargers, Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill was asked about the lack of an atmosphere with no fans in the stands. He said it was kind of difficult to get going because he feeds off of the fans.
The same question was asked during Thursday's press conference to defensive tackle Chris Jones where he reiterated what Hill said postgame.
“It was a little uncomfortable to start it off," Jones said. "Not seeing any fans in there and you’re hearing them pump up the crowd throughout the theater. It was tough. It was tough from the beginning. We kind of got used to it and we fed off of each other as teammates. That’s kind of what got us through the game, especially with how humid it was in there and having no fans played a toll.”
Jones and Hill weren't the only ones that commented on the lack of atmosphere in the games, quarterback Patrick Mahomes did as well. He said they have been changing up their "code words" with no fans to be able to mask them.
“Only thing that's kind of a disadvantage, you have to change a lot of your code words on a lot of your audibles because everybody can kind of hear you on the TV copy and everything like that, and then to the second part, it's like practicing in the locker room with no one else in there," Mahomes said. "There's literally no noise, and it is different. It's not like practice because practice you at least get music playing and that kind of gives you something. So it's all about feeding off your own energy. We didn't do a good job with that last week, but we can't start off like that against this team if we want to come out with the win on the end.”
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