-
Speaking of the fans being a factor...
So, I've noticed recently how opposing QBs seem to take cues from the crowd noise. They will have their eyes downfield and are not likely to see some of the pressure bearing down on them. However, they will break the pocket/scramble as soon as the tone/pitch of the crowd heightens (people getting excited when it looks like a defensive player will get to the quarterback).
Could this be used to our advantage? For example, could it be the fans' contribution equivalent to a defensive decoy of showing blitz but dropping extra into coverage? If we could get everyone on the same page, cheering like there's a Griz a step away from a sack, it might just rattle the opposing QB enough to throw off his timing or miss one of his reads.
Maybe any 3rd or 4th down that the QB drops back to pass after the first quarter (hopefully, he will have gotten hit a few times to increase the success of this), the crowd goes from just yelling and making noise to a higher pitched, excited scream on his third step of his drop like as if a sack was going to happen.
There has always been a claim that the WaGriz crowd isn't just loud but is smart in when and how it is loud. Here's our chance to prove it. It seems that (as has been stated) players are adapting to noisy environments and actually feeding off of them. We, as fans, need to adapt as well.
This might be too late in the week/year to implement this successfully but it would be really awesome when it did work. It would give another element of personal pride/investment to the fans like the false start penalties do. Who knows, with the additional pride and responsibility it might help more fans make the games and even increase attendance.
-