The New Orleans Saints have one of the best home-field advantages in all of sports, but that isn’t going to matter this season if stadiums are either empty or only partially filled. Bruce Arians and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are taking on the Saints in Week 1 this year, and the coach says he would prefer if fans were allowed to attend.
Arians was asked on Friday about the possibility of playing in an empty Mercedes-Benz Superdome, and he said he would prefer the sound of rowdy fans to piped-in noise. Arians said there are already “a bunch of stadiums that pipe stuff in.”
Bruce Arians on playing the Saints without a crowd in Week 1: "Sometimes I'd rather wish there were fans than piped-in crowd noise. There's a bunch of stadiums that pipe that stuff in anyway. Some have gotten caught, some haven't."
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) August 14, 2020
While he may have been making more of a general statement, the question was about playing in New Orleans. Games at the Superdome have been so loud throughout the years that some have wondered if the Saints pipe in noise, though there is only evidence of a division rival doing that, not them.
NFL teams are exploring potential ways to recreate crowd noise during games this season, so perhaps that is what Arians was referring to. Either way, we’ve seen teams make bulletin board material out of a lot less leading up to games against divisional rivals.
