Alvin Kamara says NFL ‘played’ Saints on pumped in crowd noise

Alvin Kamara isn’t very happy that the NFL is trying to sell the Saints snake oil and call it authentic crowd noise. 

Football is going to sound very different in 2020.

As if anything in this bizarro-world year is expected to be normal, the NFL is going to kick off this week without fans in the stands. That means the roaring crowd noise as we’re used to won’t be heard on Sundays.

There will, however, still be crowd noise.

The league announced a mandate that all teams must pump in fake crowd noise through its PA system during games, thus simulating as closely as possible what a normal Sunday would sound like. It’s a decent theory, especially considering many analysts and fans have suspected teams of pumping in fake crowd noise when there are actual fans in the stands, so this is merely a legal way of doing it.

But it can’t replace the energy of a home crowd buzzing with electricity and injecting their team with an unquantifiable element of adrenaline. The league is trying to make things sound normal, but players like Alvin Kamara are not fully buying in.

Alvin Kamara says the NFL can’t replace actual Saints fans

Kamara spoke to reporters about the fake crowd noise and said nothing compares to the Big Easy on a Sunday.

“I will say, it ain’t nothing compared to what the Dome sound [sic] like,” Kamara said. “I feel like they kinda played us on that.”

Of course, it’s not hard for Saints fans to feel extra slighted by the NFL. After all, this is a team that likely lost out on a critical legacy-defining Super bowl shot thanks to — without hyperbole — one of the most egregious non-calls in the history of North American sports.

The NFC Championship Game non-call will forever be a topic that is only whispered about in New Orleans, as speaking about it at normal volume will almost certainly induce a loud rage-filled rant by the closest Saints fan. The league trying to sell the team snake oil in the form of fake crowd noise, in a stadium that provides one of the loudest homefield advantages, is going to go over about as well as you’re expecting.

It’s a testament to Saints fans that the loss of fans could have such a neutralizing effect on the games played in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. The Saints is still one of the most talented teams on paper, but there’s a reason other teams hope that the road to the Super Bowl doesn’t have to go through New Orleans.

Losing fans is something we haven’t yet been able to measure as far as what the air it can suck out of a stadium, and without them there this season we’re going to find out just how much of an advantage having that 12th Man really is.