Panthers’ Rivera not worried about noise from Saints crowd
By Mike Dyce
Breaking noise records has become something of a trend at NFL games this season. The Seattle Seahawks and Kansas City Chiefs have each broken noise records this season. In addition, the Sacramento Kings broke the record for indoors at a basketball game.
The Carolina Panthers are going to the Superdome to take on the New Orleans Saints in a marquee game, and the Saints crowd is looking to break the noise record, but Panthers head coach Ron Rivera isn’t worried about it.
“I’ll be honest with you, as loud as the places get now, it really doesn’t matter,” Rivera said on Friday’s PFT Live. “Atlanta is a very loud place, Minnesota is a tough place to go in and play. I think it’s just part of it now, it really has been and I think with the way that fans get into the games today, it’s just something that you’ve got to be able to match.
“The thing that we try to talk about is what happens between the white lines and not what’s happening outside of them. It was great to hear some of our players that said that in their press conferences. Thomas Davis, most notably, came out and said it’s really about what we do and what we are going to try to do between the white lines.”
Like many teams, the Panthers prepped for the noise by pumping it in during their practices.
“[W]e have the noise piped in [to practice] and in fact we’ve had a couple of neighbors complain about this,” Rivera said. “We work on the silent counts because it is really all about getting the snap count off correctly, changing it up on how we do the silent count. There are many different things that we do to try to do to get the communications across to each other. We’re going to do some things differently on the defensive side as well because even though it isn’t going to be as loud for the defense, there is still going to be some communication things that we are going to be really good with.”