When the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants square off on Monday night, they will do it without any fans in the crowd. Different teams will be allowed a varying number of fans in stadiums as the season goes on but there is no consistency.
This means that in the first game of the season, the Steelers and Giants will square off in an empty stadium. To counteract some of this, New York will pump some crowd noise into the stadium to help with one big problem.
The stadium could be too quiet for the offenses. This was something Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger addressed on Wednesday. The worry is if the stadium is too quiet it will make calling plays difficult because the opposing defenses will hear the calls.
Roethlisberger said this is something the team has addressed but are hopeful the artificial noise will be enough to make it so defenses cannot hear in the huddle and the team won’t be forced to turn to hand signals. Big Ben did say they’ve considered calling two plays in the huddle and then making the call at the line of scrimmage to mask what they are going to do.
