At Least First Four Games Could Be In Empty Stadiums

The Vikings on Tuesday announced they will not let fans into U.S. Bank Stadium for the season-opening showdown against Green Bay.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers’ opening game at the Minnesota Vikings will be played in front of about 67,000 empty seats. 

The Vikings on Tuesday announced they’ll play their first two home games with no fans. Said the team in a statement:

“Based on our conversations and the current Minnesota Department of Health guidelines that specify an indoor venue capacity of 250, we have determined it is not the right time to welcome fans back to U.S. Bank Stadium. As a result, the first two Vikings home games on Sunday, Sept. 13, and Sunday, Sept. 27, will be closed to the public. We will continue to work with the appropriate officials on our plans with the hope of bringing fans back in a safe manner later this season.”

Earlier this month, the Packers announced the same policy of no fans for at least the first two home games.

“Lambeau Field will not be the same without our fans’ energetic support in the stands,” Packers President/CEO Mark Murphy said via Packers.com. “Given the extraordinary circumstances this year and the additional protocols in place, though, we determined it was best to take incremental steps to start the regular season. These two games will allow us to focus our attention on safely conducting games inside the stadium with all necessary participants.

“We are hopeful that we will be able to host fans for games later in the season, should conditions allow. We will continue to consult with community healthcare and public health officials on the pandemic conditions in our area. We ask our fans to continue to help by wearing masks and maintaining social distancing guidelines.”

For Tuesday’s practice inside Lambeau Field, the Packers practiced with prerecorded crowd noise. On Monday, quarterback Aaron Rodgers said there will be an “85-decibel threshold” for artificial crowd noise at games.

The Packers potentially could play at least their first four games with no fans. After Green Bay visits Minnesota for Week 1 and hosts Detroit for Week 2, it will play at New Orleans in Week 3. The Saints announced last week that there will be no fans allowed for their home opener against Tampa Bay and that it was “unlikely” fans would be allowed for the game against the Packers. Avoiding the raucous environments in Minnesota and New Orleans would be major breaks for what appeared to be a daunting early slate of road games.

Green Bay’s Week 4 game is at home against Atlanta. After a Week 5 bye, the Packers will play at Tampa Bay and Houston.

The Packers went 7-1 at home last season, with their defense thriving with 78,000 fans voicing their support. But they also went 6-2 on the road, when the offense had to deal with the noise but the defense got to play in relative tranquility.

“As a defensive player, you can hear a lot of the checks from the quarterback, or a lot of the center calls or things like that,” linebacker Christian Kirksey said. “It’s a little bit easier to hear. We all know with added fan noise, sometimes it can be hard to communicate, but with it being completely silent, you literally can hear every single word. So, I think that we can definitely use that to our advantage. But as a defensive player, offenses are doing the same things. They can hear our checks, and it might be a little bit better for them, because usually the crowd is on our side. So now they can hear our checks and things like that, so we’ve got to maybe use more hand signals to not give people an opportunity to know what we’re doing.”


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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.