As the Panthers prepare step onto the biggest NFL stage in prime time, they know it will be loud in the Superdome. And they don’t care.
At least they say the don’t care.
“I’ll be honest with you, as loud as the places get now, it really doesn’t matter,” coach Ron Rivera said of the noise in New Orleans on Friday’s PFT Live. “Atlanta is a very loud place, Minnesota is a tough place to go in and play. I think it’s just part of it now, it really has been and I think with the way that fans get into the games today, it’s just something that you’ve got to be able to match.
“The thing that we try to talk about is what happens between the white lines and not what’s happening outside of them. It was great to hear some of our players that said that in their press conferences. Thomas Davis, most notably, came out and said it’s really about what we do and what we are going to try to do between the white lines.”
That doesn’t mean the Panthers haven’t prepared for the coming storm of sound.
"[W]e have the noise piped in [to practice] and in fact we’ve had a couple of neighbors complain about this,” Rivera said. “We work on the silent counts because it is really all about getting the snap count off correctly, changing it up on how we do the silent count. There are many different things that we do to try to do to get the communications across to each other. We’re going to do some things differently on the defensive side as well because even though it isn’t going to be as loud for the defense, there is still going to be some communication things that we are going to be really good with.”
The best way to deal with the sound would be to jump on the Saints early and take the crowd out of the game. If the Panthers can do that and in turn win, they’ll be well on their way to the No. 2 seed in the NFC.