Jared Goff says it’s a great place for a quarterback after the team tests out the Rams’ and Chargers’ new home.
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‘Spectacular’: Rams give SoFi Stadium rave reviews after a scrimmage
INGLEWOOD — The promise of football in L.A.’s new multi-billion-dollar sports palace moved a step closer to reality when the Rams jogged onto the artificial turf at SoFi Stadium for the first time Saturday evening. The event left a lot to the imagination. But imagination can beat reality these days.
Even if it wasn’t quite football, only a preseason scrimmage, and it wasn’t quite Rams owner and stadium builder Stan Kroenke’s vision, with 70,000 seats empty for now, it still was a feel-good moment for players and coaches.
“How amazing. This is something spectacular. Never seen anything like it,” Rams coach Sean McVay said after the two-hour scrimmage. “I thought it was really special, just watching the players’ reactions to how magnificent this is when they got here.
“They could envision themselves playing here on Sunday, Sept. 13th against the Cowboys.”
No fans were allowed inside for the scrimmage, which became SoFi Stadium’s first (un)official event after the postponement of summer concerts by Taylor Swift and others and the cancelation of NFL preseason games because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But there was pumped-in crowd noise. Players wore the franchise’s new helmets and uniforms, the offense in bone-white and the defense in blue jerseys and pants. Nobody tackled, but the action was fast-paced and spirited.
McVay’s only complaints were about sound. The coaches’ headsets malfunctioned, making play-calling chaotic. And he’s not a big fan of fake crowd noise, it turns out.
“There’s nothing like real crowd noise. In some instances, that fake crowd noise is nothing but irritating,” McVay said.
Quarterback Jared Goff called the stadium “one of the crown jewels in sports,” and said it was a good place to throw passes in, emphasis on “in.”
“As a quarterback, anytime it’s indoors, you love it,” Goff said. “It’s a little bit of both (indoors and outdoors), really. You feel a little breeze, but it’s indoors for the most part.”
It’s hard to form a full impression of an empty stadium. But a few things struck the eye and ear.
• The 70,000-seat stadium, expandable to 100,000 for some events, is huge without seeming vast. The stands rise more vertically than in most places. The Rams say the highest seats are about 50 feet closer to the field than the corresponding seats at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
• The stadium’s website takes some poetic license when it says the translucent roof with ends and sides open to the air make it feel like “sitting on a covered patio.” But the effect seemed to work when you walked in on the sixth floor an 85-degree day and felt a cooling breeze.
• The Oculus, the double-sided video board that rings the ceiling, manages to add to the view without dragging your attention away from the field as some stadiums’ giant displays do. That’s how it felt, anyway, from the press box on the sixth of the stadium’s eight levels.
Rams players were as curious about their new surroundings as fans will be the first time they’re allowed in, whenever that might be. Some were seen looking around, pointing up, snapping selfies on the field before the scrimmage.
The few hundred people inside — team and stadium employees, reporters in a socially distanced press box — learned a little about Rams players and where they stand as the coaches work to pare the 80-man training-camp roster down to 53 plus a 16-man practice squad.
The Rams are scheduled for a second and last scrimmage at SoFi Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 29. That will be the dress rehearsal for the season-opening — and stadium-opening — Sunday night game against the Cowboys that suddenly feels a little more real.
