It’s one of those topics that we as media and fans love to talk about.
How crowd noise at a football stadium can affect the visiting team.
The Dallas Cowboys play the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium at 3:25 p.m. Sunday and Chiefs Kingdom will be ready to bring the noise. And, really, Ezekiel Elliott insisted, crowd noise can absolutely be an issue.
“If it’s loud and I’m trying to say something to you and you can’t hear me and that’s the play that we’re running, yeah, that’s real,” Elliott said after Wednesday’s practice at The Star. He even mimicked struggling to hear in the huddle. “If Dak [Prescott’s] trying to say the play and I’m sitting right here in the huddle (crouches down, leans over) and I can’t hear him, that’s real because we’ve got to figure out what our assignment is. We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing.”
The Cowboys will practice with loud music to prepare for the noise. They got a preview of sorts three weeks ago when they played the Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium. But Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy told his team it will be louder in KC.
“When we went up to Minnesota it was about 120 decibels where Arrowhead has been to 140,” McCarthy said. “So that’s what we’re preparing for. It’s an incredible environment. Not a lot of our players have played there so [we] just give them a little snippet of what it looks like today and what it sounds like. Noise will be a big part of our preparation this week.”
For Elliott and the offense, the key will be to stay focused on each other.
“It’s just making sure we’re focused, we’re locked in, and getting all our calls, getting all our communication so we can all be on the same page,” Elliott said. “We just have to make sure our communication is on point this week.”
Of course, the crowd noise will be secondary in difficulty to the Chiefs, who have been to the past two Super Bowls
“I feel like we need to win Sunday because it’s the next game, not because they’ve won a Super Bowl recently,” Elliott said. “We need to win the next game because that’s the next stop on our journey to winning a championship. There you go.”