Buffalo Bills new stadium creators want to amplify the noise

“I don’t think I’ve heard a crowd that loud in my career in the NFL,” the Buffalo Bills’ head coach said as he opened his post-game news conference earlier this month following a 48-20 win over the Miami Dolphins at Highmark Stadium. “There were times we couldn’t even communicate with the middle linebacker out there.”

McDermott, who calls defensive plays by radioing them into a player’s helmet earpiece, was unbothered by that slight inconvenience. The observation was a compliment, not a complaint. “It sounded like jet engines out there,” he added later. “It really did. I mean, it was deafening.”

That isn’t an exaggeration. A jet plane’s roar registers at around 140 decibels on takeoff, and Bills fans have come close. In a 2015 attempt to win the Guinness World Record for loudest crowd roar, Bills fans hit 124.8 decibels.

(While that may be impressive – and dangerous for your vocal cords and eardrums – it wasn’t enough to win the record, which belongs to Kansas City Chiefs fans at 142.2 decibels.)

McDermott isn’t walking around with a sound level meter, but if his gut take was correct, maybe Bills fans are outdoing themselves – and with louder times to come. As the team builds a new stadium that is scheduled to open across the street in Orchard Park three years from now, emphasizing and amplifying crowd noise is a major motivator.

“The future stadium will enhance the energy of the Bills fans and create the loudest environment in the NFL,” said Jonathan Mallie, the architect who is co-leading the Bills stadium project.

You can see it in the design.

In May, a group of executives from the Bills and their architectural design firm, Populous, presented their new stadium plans to a group of students at Depew Middle School. One of the students, recognizing that crowd…