Dolphins happy to play in front of fans again. ‘It felt a lot more like a football game’
It was a strange day at Hard Rock Stadium. A power outage in a quadrant of the stadium led to CBS losing its live feed for about 20 minutes in the first half. A thunderstorm in the area led to a lightning delay seconds into the second half. Rain sprinkled, and poured and stopped, in typical South Florida fashion.
In this strange year, the strangest development might have been simply the way fans were positioned in the crowd. Yes, COVID-19 is still an ongoing concern, but the Miami Dolphins became one of the first professional sports teams in the United States to host fans in the stands Sunday as 11,705 descended upon Miami Gardens to watch the Dolphins lose 31-28 to the Buffalo Bills.
It was far from the 65,326 capacity, and even more than 1,000 short of the 13,000 the state and county are allowing, but it was still a noticeable difference for the Dolphins, who played in an empty stadium last week against the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
“It was a way better environment, way better atmosphere,” quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick said. “Even though the place obviously wasn’t at capacity, it felt a lot more like a football game. It was not eerily quiet the whole game, so that was, I think, huge for us and something as players that we all really enjoyed.”
Miami (0-2) was one of four NFL teams to host fans this week, joining the Cleveland Browns, Indianapolis Colts and Dallas Cowboys. The Dolphins’ crowd was larger than the Browns’ and Colts, but smaller than the Cowboys’.
The small crowd still didn’t seem to create any sort of significant homefield advantage for the Dolphins, though. The Bills (2-0) only committed six penalties for 55 yards and crowd noise never seemed to be a factor.
“It was awesome to have fans there,” tight end Mike Gesicki said. “It was a good atmosphere compared to, obviously, having none last week, so it felt good to get some people back in the stadium, but we’ve got to be able to close some things out, win some games for them.”
Miami will continue to fill its stadium at 20 percent capacity for the foreseeable future, although CEO Tom Garfinkel said capacity could increase to 50 percent later in the season.
Hard Rock will host up to 13,000 fans once again Saturday when the No. 12 Miami Hurricanes host the Florida State Seminoles. The Hurricanes had just 8,153 fans in attendance for their home opener against the UAB Blazers on Sept. 10.
Florida’s seven-day average positivity rate is down to 4.31 percent and Miami-Dade County’s rate is down to 4.19 percent.
This story was originally published September 20, 2020 at 6:12 PM.
