Panthers trips to New Orleans get weird, but Sunday’s game at Saints may be the weirdest

A road trip to New Orleans, as anyone who has been there will attest, can get very weird very fast.

For the Carolina Panthers, though, this one may feel weird in a good way.

I’ve covered games in nearly every NFL stadium. New Orleans and Seattle, to me, are consistently the loudest venues. Saints fans in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome are something to behold, especially for night games when many of them come to the stadium very well-lubricated.

This game, though? The Saints only are able to host 3,000 fans in the 73,000-seat Superdome due to COVID-19 regulations.

“It should work out in our favor, man,” said Panthers cornerback Donte Jackson, who grew up in New Orleans and considered Drew Brees to be one of his favorite players as a youth. “Those New Orleans fans — they get really rowdy in the dome.”

To even get to 3,000 fans, the Saints seemed to play a bit of political hardball, threatening to move some of their home games to Baton Rouge to play in LSU’s stadium where more fans have been allowed.

In any case, it will be far easier for the Panthers to hear quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s signal-calling on offense Sunday. Bridgewater, the former Saint, is New Orleans’ “frenemy” this weekend, joked Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan to reporters.

▪ For NFL reporters, there’s another quirk to the Superdome you probably wouldn’t imagine. The press box is so high it practically hangs from the dome’s ceiling and it also sits near a monstrous cooling fan of some type. The result: it can feel a bit like a December night in Boone up there, especially once fans depart and take their body heat with them. I have written stories in that press box many a time wearing a winter coat.

▪ For those who listen to the Panthers’ home radio broadcast during games, you may have wondered why former Carolina safety Kurt Coleman is analyzing games this season alongside Mick Mixon and Jim Szoke rather than Panthers’ Hall of Honor members Jake Delhomme and Jordan Gross. It comes down to three words: Coleman is local.

Delhomme commuted from Louisiana for Panthers’ radio broadcasts and Gross had to come from his farm in Idaho. It’s likely that the 2019 analyst mixture — when Delhomme broadcast all the home games and a couple of nearby road games and Gross did the rest of the away games — will return in 2021. In the meantime, Coleman is an able substitute.

▪ I wrote a long column this weekend on Carolina edge rusher Brian Burns, the former Florida State star who I believe has Pro Bowl potential. This little factoid didn’t fit, though: Burns said he has been absolutely torching UNC alum Tre Boston, the Panther safety and very loud Tar Heel fan, about FSU’s upset win over UNC in Tallahassee last weekend.

▪ Prediction time. First of all, don’t listen to me on predictions. After nailing the result of the Panthers’ first three games, I have missed on each of the past three.

So I’m 3-3 and in a slump. Carolina fans are going to be happy if I miss again: I think the Saints, coming off a bye, have a little too much firepower even without their usual homefield, full-stadium advantage. And Carolina’s struggles with COVID-19 related issues this past week won’t help. My pick: New Orleans 34, Carolina 27.

This story was originally published October 25, 2020 at 6:00 AM.