Getty Lions head coach Dan Campbell at Bank of America Stadium on August 25, 2023.
While the Seattle Seahawks (0-1) clearly have a lot to work on following their disastrous 30-13 loss to the Los Angeles Rams (1-0), it appears the team will need to master this one thing before facing the Detroit Lions in Week 2: the silent count.
The Lions are riding high following their 21-20 road win over the reigning Super Bowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, and with such strong momentum heading into their home opener at Ford Field, the Seahawks will be entering hostile territory on Sunday, September 17.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell told reporters that the atmosphere at Ford Field will make the noise level at Arrowhead Stadium, which broke Lumen Field’s noise record in 2014, seem mild.
“I’m expecting it to be loud, I know what Arrowhead is and it was loud,” Campbell said Monday. “I expect it to be louder than that, I really do. I just know our fans, and it’ll be to the point where you can’t hear yourself think, for them anyway.”
#Lions HC Dan Campbell expects Sunday’s home opener vs. the Seahawks to be louder than Arrowhead Stadium.
“To the point where you can’t hear yourself think.”
The Lions have sold out all their season tickets for the time in Ford Field’s 21-year history.
Campbell isn’t whistling dixie. Lions president Rod Wood announced on August 4 that they sold out all their season tickets for the first time in Ford Field’s 21-year history, the Detroit Free Press reported. With the Lions projected win the NFC North, fan fervor is at an all-time high. Wood noted the franchise needed to create a waitlist for tickets – another first.
For the first time in Ford Field’s 21-year history, the Detroit Lions have sold out season tickets.
Even Lions training camp brought out a packed house of fans, per NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, so the Seahawks offense will have their work cut out for them playing on the road in front of 65,000 screaming Lions fans.
Seahawks Need to ‘Bounce Back’ Against ‘One of the Hottest Teams in the World,’ Pete Caroll Said
GettySeahawks dead coach Pete Carroll at Lumen Field on September 10, 2023.
The Seahawks’ performance against the Rams, a team they were favored to beat, was awful on both sides of the ball, especially in the second half when the offense totaled just 12 yards and the defense allowed quarterback Matthew Stafford and co. to score on all five offensive possessions.
Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll took responsibility for his shortcomings during the post-game press conference. “I look at a little bit of misjudgment on my part that we would be able to do things we’ve been doing and be able to play a good football game,” he said. “Didn’t work out that way. We needed to pressure them more and get heat on them to cover them up and get off the darn field.”
Right now, the best course of action is to shake off this defeat and head into Week 2 with a clean slate, which is much easier said than done.
“This is a big challenge for us to bounce back,” Carroll said. “Look what we’re going against. Going to go against one of the hottest teams in the world coming up in Detroit. We’ll see how this goes. Now it’s about us digging back into it. We’ve done a ton of the right stuff all the way through. I’ve been telling you how the preparation has gone. When it matched up and came time, we weren’t able to get off the field like we thought we would be able to. They did a nice job taking care of it and didn’t give us the football other than the blocked kick. That’s enough to play a good football game if they can take care of the ball, and they did. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
QB Geno Smith Hopes Week 1 Loss Serves as a Wake-Up Call
This ain’t good: Geno Smith said the Rams “wanted it more” than his #Seahawks
“It just looked like they were playing harder.”
Asked if if this should, thus, be a wake-up call. His answer:
It’s tough taking such a demoralizing loss in Week 1, especially when there was such hype throughout training camp and preseason, but Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith, who completed 16-of-26 of his passes for 112 yards and one touchdown against the Rams, is hoping the team can uses it as fuel.
While basically half of the Seahawks’ roster is made up of rookies and second-year players, “We got to understand that we got to go earn it every single play, every single down, every single game,” Smith told reporters after the game. “Like I said, it’s the NFL. I know we got a lot of young guys who for their first time are playing regular-season football and might not know how hard you got to play to go out there and get wins.
“But they don’t come easy, and so I think this is going to be a great learning experience for us. I think we can look at these moments later on down the season and say that we gain from it.”