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.
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“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 after 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. “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.
