In a midweek visit to PFT Live, Saints coach Sean Payton explained that he wanted to match the conditions his team will face in Seattle as much as possible.
“We’re trying to simulate as best we can,” Payton said. “We’ve got the speakers booming. If we had time we’d have put the 12th Man flagpole up and raised it right before the start of practice and flown in a Seattle resident. It’s just trying to create that environment for your players that will be much like it is on game day and you try to think of a lot of different things in regards to your preparation and be really detailed and it really signifies the attention to detail we’ve got to pay this week.”
The attention to detail extended to simulating rain. With none in the forecast for New Orleans, Payton had an idea.
Via Ed Werder of ESPN, Payton discussed setting off the fire alarm in the indoor practice facility, which would have turned on the sprinklers. Fortunately (or maybe for our purposes unfortunately), Payton was talked out of it.
Still, we like the idea. And we can’t help but wonder whether a coach who’s facing a road game against a team with a rabid fan base will hold practice in his stadium and encourage the local fans to fill the place up and create real adverse crowd noise that is then artificially amplified while the offense is trying to call plays.