The term ‘new normal’ gets thrown around a lot these days. Most times in situations in which you hope to God it’s not true. Basically every day of 2020 has seen moments like that. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it a lot of moments like that. And sports have had been struggling to find its bearings as a result.
For the NFL, it meant no offseason, no preseason, daily tests during training camp, and either a reduced fan presence at games or no fans at all. For the Raiders, it’s no fans at all.
Playing in an empty stadium would be rough for most teams. But it’s especially rough for the Raiders and their fans who were eagerly anticipating the opening of their new stadium in Las Vegas this season.
“First of all, it’s crushing,” said Raiders head coach Jon Gruden. “I know how bad it hurts our owner, Mark Davis. Like I said earlier, he set this thing up, I don’t know how he did it, but he’s crushed. I know he’s crushed for not being able to let his fans in here and our sponsors and people that made this thing happen.”
Friday, the Raiders players went through their entire game-day routine, getting on buses from the facility, suiting up in full uniforms, and taking the field at Allegiant Stadium for the first time ever.
In a normal year, if they were to do this, it would just be a preview of their first home preseason game, which was originally scheduled for this week, and the visions would be of 65K fans packing the place and going crazy to see this team.
“Yeah it is kind of surreal,” said running back Jalen Richard after the scrimmage Friday. “It’s so big and massive and a little bit more on top of us than the Oakland Coliseum. . . It’s going to definitely be weird without having the fans in and just seeing this big, nice stadium and have it not be full of fans.”
But, again, this isn’t a normal year. In this abnormal time, coming out on the field to silence and empty seats accurately prepare this team for what they will get when they first take this field for a game.
“It was good to get out there and kind of see what it would be like without fans,” defensive tackle Maurice Hurst said Sunday over conference call from training camp. “It was kind of strange, but at the end of the day you’re playing the game of football and it’s the same thing you’ve been doing since you were a little kid. Fans or not, I think it’ll be a really great atmosphere. They had the music going. They had artificial crowd noise that I think they might allow this season. Just felt great to get into that brand-new stadium and have it feel like home. This place definitely feels like home.”
Playing in a stadium such as this one is the kind of ‘new normal’ these players can get used to. The full welcome, however, will have to wait until next season when the fans can share it with them.
“We got to keep our eye on the bullseye, and that is beating this virus and hopefully we can bring some smiles to people’s faces on the football field,” Gruden added. “But we miss them, and we certainly can’t wait to share this Raider organization with them.”
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