"You won't go to a louder place, other than maybe Kansas City, than we are going to be at this weekend, so it's important that our guys focus in on it and do a good job," Reid said yesterday.
Reid was asked whether noise affects what an offense can do on the road, whether it has to give up some of the bells and whistles when communication is limited to hand signals.
"Not normally," he said. "If you're good at it and you practice it, then you should be able to function in a normal way. Now, to do that takes a lot of time, and that's why we practice it."
Of course, there is no guarantee the Metrodome is going to be sold out for tomorrow's game - about 3,100 tickets remained yesterday evening - and there is an excellent chance that more than a handful of Eagles fans will drive the 1,200 miles from the Philadelphia area to Minneapolis, or find their way there somehow. So it will be interesting to see how the noise equation really works.
If the idea of practicing so much with the noise machine this season is to inure the Eagles' offense to sound, left offensive tackle Tra Thomas suggested it has worked.
"We've been doing it for so long now, we don't even pay attention to it anymore," Thomas said.
"There's never been any situations where it's actually been as loud as we practice with it," left guard Todd Herremans said. "You get accustomed to looking for other things, rather than listening for the quarterback."
Thomas figures to mostly be matched against Pro Bowl defensive end Jared Allen, who notched 14 1/2 sacks this season. The last time they faced each other, in 2005 when Allen played for the Chiefs, he sacked Donovan McNabb once.
