The San Francisco 49ers on Thursday will visit the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium − a place that has become something of a secondary home for the red and gold since it opened in 2020.
Road games against the Rams have typically been a heavy travel game for 49ers fans thanks to a large number of fans in Southern California, but also thanks to another significant portion of fans who’ll make the one hour flight or six hour drive down to Inglewood, Calif.
That was expected to be a major advantage for the 49ers in January of 2022 when they visited the Rams in the NFC championship game. San Francisco was going on the road, but a takeover by their fans would either mitigate LA’s home-field advantage or swing it in the 49ers’ direction.
According to former 49ers long snapper Taybor Pepper, the Rams combatted the potential invasion by pumping in a ton of crowd noise. Pepper on Tuesday posted about that aspect of the 2021 NFC title game:
It’s not a huge surprise if the Rams did, in fact, pump in fake crowd noise. The game was the biggest contest in the stadium’s brief history and the Rams were hosting their first NFC championship game since 2001 when they were the St. Louis Rams. They’d just traded for quarterback Matthew Stafford and were trying to snap a long losing streak vs. San Francisco.
Ultimately the crowd noise wasn’t a huge factor in a game the 49ers could have put away multiple times. They led by two touchdowns entering the fourth quarter, had a huge defensive miscue when safety Jaquiski Tartt dropped an interception, and then made numerous mistakes offensively down the stretch that pushed the Rams over the top and into the Super Bowl at their home stadium.
The Rams-49ers fan dynamic isn’t liable to go anywhere any time soon. And if there’s a playoff game between the two teams in any round at SoFi Stadium, they’ll certainly be willing to go back to artificial crowd noise if they think it gives them an edge.
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This article originally appeared on Niners Wire: Former 49er calls out Rams trying to combat 49ers fan takeover in 2021 NFC championship
Reporting by Kyle Madson, Niners Wire / Niners Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
