The San Francisco 49ers remain a popular team in the Los Angeles area, but Sunday's crowd at SoFi Stadium for the playoff-impacting game against the Los Angeles Rams was wild. The Rams were the home team, but you couldn't tell. That's because the crowd was dominated by 49ers fans, forcing the Rams to play in a hostile environment on their own turf.
It got so bad for the Rams that the crowd noise forced the offense to use a silent count during critical moments in the game. It was too loud to ignore.
"It was a tough environment for us to communicate in really the whole second half," Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford said after the game, per ESPN.
Stafford's wife, Kelly, was equally blown away by the number of opposing fans at the Inglewood venue.
"I have never seen so many of the opposing team's fans at a game," Kelly Stafford said on her podcast this week, per Sports Illustrated. "And we came from Detroit, and there are a lot of good traveling teams there, but that was wild…It was crazy. I've never seen anything like that, but it made it very hard for us."
Most of the 74,447 announced attendance appeared to be cheering the visiting 49ers, made up of locals and those who choose to travel to watch the road team fight for a playoff spot.
"It did catch us off guard," Rams coach Sean McVay said Monday. "Just because of the way that it's been this year. It's been great, great atmosphere, great environment. Yesterday was the same thing, but there was a lot of red there. That was definitely a surprise."
49ers fans are also well represented in the state of Texas. The Dallas-area chapter of the Niner Empire is among the biggest. The Cowboys are calling for fans to white out AT&T Stadium on Sunday. It will be interesting if we see a similar takeover in Arlington when the Cowboys host the 49ers in the opening round of the playoffs.
The Cowboys' owner, Jerry Jones, didn't sound too concerned about a potential red and gold invasion.
"I think it's a great atmosphere," Jones said this week on 105.3 The Fan. "You'd have to really be missing the sensitivity that's around the Cowboys right now to think that, in my mind, that we're going to have any concern, really, over the [opposing fans]. It will be a Cowboys home game. There's no question about it. A home playoff game, and it will be roaring."
The Rams probably felt the same way…until Sunday.