A former San Francisco 49ers player is the latest football player to accuse the Los Angeles Rams of pumping in fake crowd noise at SoFi Stadium.
Taybor Pepper, a former 49ers long snapper who played from 2020 to 2024, made the accusations on X this week.
“Any time I think about the Rams, I think about how much crowd noise was pumped in the stadium during that NFC Championship game,” he wrote. "“Never heard SoFi that loud before or after that game and I’m pretty sure the Niner fans were still the majority of ticket holders that game too."
Any time I think about the Rams, I think about how much crowd noise was pumped in the stadium during that NFC Championship game.
Never heard SoFi that loud before or after that game and I’m pretty sure the Niner fans were still the majority of ticket holders that game too 🧐
— Taybor Pepper (@TayborSnapping) September 30, 2025
The 49ers played two games against the Rams at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood during a two-week period, including the NFC title game. San Francisco fans swarmed the stadium — leading the Rams to restrict ticket sales to those in the Los Angeles area, SF Gate reported.
The large presence of Niners fans in the Rams stadium led Pepper's teammate Deebo Samuel to level a similar accusation at the time.
"I feel like the Rams pump noise because there wasn’t that many Rams fans there," Samuel said, according to an ESPN reporter.
Though plenty of shade-throwing stems from the Rams-49ers long-standing rivalry, accusations of phony crowd noise in Inglewood hasn't been limited to San Francisco players.
Last week, Colts safety Cam Bynum accused the Rams of piping in cheers during a game last season, when he faced them as a member of the Vikings.
"They play fake crowd noise because their crowd isn't that turnt. The Rams, they have a good fanbase, but they've moved around so much that it's not like true fans — it's more like a celebrity show in there," he said on the Downs 2 Business podcast. "On third downs you see the crowd is sitting down, but somehow there's noise coming from somewhere. We're just looking around last year like 'That noise is coming from the speakers.'"
Much has been said about the challenges faced by Los Angeles' two football teams, which both relocated to the city in 2017.
Playing artificial crowd noise over stadium sound systems is prohibited by the NFL, but it's a common allegation. The Falcons were fined and stripped of a fifth-round draft pick in 2015 after officials determined they had pumped in crowd noise, NBC Sports reported.