Packers fans get creative to create more crowd noise despite small numbers

Despite only being about 10 percent full last weekend, Packers fans made their impact felt.

Aaron Rodgers noticed it. Matt LaFleur noticed it. Heck, anyone in the press box or watching at home noticed it. Packers fans at Lambeau Field were loud last Saturday. Perhaps we weren’t used to it given the season full of silence and self-created crowd noise injected into our ear drums courtesy of the Lambeau speaker system (the same goes for stadiums around the NFL). But real, organic crowd noise? There’s nothing like it.

Fans in Green Bay will do more of the same this Sunday, as the Packers prepare for the first home NFC Championship Game of Rodgers’ long, storied career. He will be banking on fans making the same sort of impact on a 43-year-old Tom Brady — a task easier said than done. Brady’s been through the ringer at this point in his career.

How have Packers fans been this loud?

Fans were hitting the seats in front of them, and the aluminum signs which hang around the field. Bleachers, as well, were used for more than just standing.

“The kids figured out pretty quickly that the signs were quite the noise weapon,” Andrew Larsen of Rockford, Illinois, said, per the Green Bay Press-Gazette. “It didn’t take long before that tactic had spread through the stadium. Definitely added to the noise. I did plenty of stomping myself, but the signs were the largest contributor. Hoping for more of that this Sunday.”

Rodgers himself noticed the efforts of fans, smaller in numbers but just as large in impact.

“It felt like 50,000 when we ran out of that tunnel. It really did,” Rodgers said. “It’s hard to really put into words how special that feeling is. But you can feel it. It’s so palpable. You can feel that energy in the stadium.”

If Packers supporters can do more of the same on Sunday, it’ll produce the authentic home environment that Lambeau Field is known for, giving the home team an edge that — given the impact of COVID-19 around the country — they probably didn’t expect at this point in the season.