A lot was made of San Francisco 49ers fans at SoFi Stadium during their Week 18 road game against the Los Angeles Rams.
The crowd inside the new state-of-the-art stadium in Southern California played a major role as San Francisco won the game and earned a trip to the playoffs.
Fast forward a few weeks, and San Francisco is set to take on the Rams at SoFi Stadium in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday.
Ahead of their huge game with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, most of the talk surrounded how SoFi Stadium could end up becoming “Levi’s South,” a homage to the 49ers’ home stadium in Northern California. It now seems to be a reality.
San Francisco 49ers fans take over SoFi Stadium ahead of NFC Championship Game
How will San Francisco 49ers’ fan presence affect NFC Championship Game?
“We had a chance there at the end of the game. I thought our guys did a good job communicating. It was a tough environment for us to communicate in, really, the whole second half,” Matthew Stafford said after the Rams' Week 18 loss to the 49ers.
Stafford’s wife, Kelly, expanded on that thought process a bit later.
“I have never seen so many of the opposing team’s fans at a game. We came from Detroit. There were a lot of good traveling teams there, but that was wild,” Kelly Stafford said on her podcast. “Matthew was on a silent count, Jimmy Garoppolo was not. It was crazy. It made it very hard for us, because I guess we weren’t expecting to be going silent count.”
Matthew Stafford and the Rams offense being forced to go with a silent count at home certainly did have an impact in the second half of their Week 18 loss.
Los Angeles found itself up 17-3 at the half, only to lose in overtime. For his part, Stafford was under pressure throughout the game. The silent count played a role here.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds Sunday afternoon at SoFi Stadium with a trip to the Super Bowl against the Cincinnati Bengals on the line between these two bitter NFC West rivals.
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