Winning is a cure-all, and there’s no better proof of that than on Sundays in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Since its inception, the Falcons‘ home has been a place where opposing fan bases take over. The club has never played a playoff game in the Benz, and it’s been a ghost town on game days for the past several years. The loudest it would get was when national fan bases showed up like the Steelers, Eagles, etc.
Outside of the season openers, Falcons fans rarely packed out the stadium. It’s fair too. Why would fans pay exorbitant ticket prices to watch a terrible product?
I go to a handful of games every year, regardless of the state of the team, but it’s embarrassing to show up and regularly be outnumbered by visiting teams’ fans. I’ve gone to the season opener every single year since the Benz opened, and it’s usually pretty alive, but that energy dies as the season progresses.
It was no different this year. Against the Panthers, Falcons fans showed up in droves. It was a packed house, though the club level sections were rather thin. The environment actually felt like a home field advantage, but that’s not atypical of season openers.
Last year against the Saints, it was similarly packed. However, as the season went on, Falcons fans showed up less and less. By the end of the season, like when the Steelers came to town, Atlanta had turned into a home away from home for opposing fans.
There seems to be something different in the air in 2023, though. That excitement from Week 1 looks to be sustainable because the Falcons are actually winning football games. The crowd was rocking for the Packers game, and Grady Jarrett credits the fans for the club’s hot start.
“It’s been amazing, man. That energy is just crazy,” Jarrett told Kelly Price of FOX 5. “I love it, everybody on the team loves it, coach loves it. It’s a part of the reason we’re winning, too. We go out there, and the fans showing up like that makes you want to play harder.”
Though the Falcons are traveling to Detroit this week and across the pond next week, the team will be back in Week 5 as the Texans come to town and will surely be expecting a similar crowd as the first two games. It’s been a long time coming for Falcons fans, and Jarrett knows that better than anyone in the organization.
“It’s time for it,” Jarrett continued. “ATL has been begging for it and it feels very good to see them having fun. Coming to Atlanta, I can’t imagine being a visiting team and seeing from the culture to whatever it may be; we got entertainers and the crowd’s going crazy [in a] world-class stadium.”
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