Inside the stadium, the Super Bowl is usually one of the quietest NFL games of the year. Neither team has all its home fans in the stands, and the folks who can afford tickets tend to be more the suit-and-tie crowd and less the “support your team” face-painting crowd.
But Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who has been in plenty of loud games at Lucas Oil Stadium, wants his players to be ready for noise on Super Bowl Sunday. And so the Patriots, who haven’t played in a dome all season, blasted loud music during their Wednesday practice at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center.
“We can make it loud enough so that [the players] can’t hear,” Belichick told AFC pool reporter Alex Marvez. “As long as they can’t hear, you have to do silent communications whether it’s on defense with hand signals or offense with tapping the center [for the snap] and all that.”
The Patriots practiced for two and a half hours on Wednesday, and Belichick seemed pleased.
“We had our moments – some good ones and some things we’ve got to work on,” Belichick said. “They’re trying. They’re working hard. We’ve got a ways to go, though. We’ve had a little bit of extra time to prepare so we hit all the areas. I thought we had good tempo and good timing. We’ll back down a little bit the next couple of days.”