Chiefs and Eagles Players Blast Super Bowl’s Terrible Turf: ‘Like Playing on a Water Park’

Isaiah Pacheco
Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Warner Todd Huston

Players on both Super Bowl LVII teams say that playing on the $800,000 turf at Phoenix’s State Farm Stadium was a terrible experience.

Ahead of the game, the media celebrated the stadium’s turf as some of the best in Super Bowl history. NFL field surface expert Nick Pappas, for one, was interviewed by several outlets and was seen saying that the league took extra care to cultivate the perfect natural grass field for the Super bowl.

“For this one, obviously, we’re giving it a little extra care,” Pappas told the media ahead of the game. “We’ve got a lot of groundskeepers here for about a month, putting eyes on it, putting hands on it, working on it all day, every day, getting it ready for game day.”

The field was also given the thumbs up by “The Sodfather,” George Toma, one of the NFL’s top sod experts, who proclaimed the grass the second-best he’d ever seen for the big game.

But as far as the players are concerned, Pappas and the grounds team missed the mark by a wide shot. As a result, players on both sides have come out to criticize the unsatisfactory field.

Several players were seen slipping on the field, the most obvious example being Eagles kicker Jake Elliot who barely made his kick before crashing to the ground when his left foot slipped in the sod.

Elliot wasn’t the only one to struggle with the grass.

“I’m not going to lie, it was the worst field that I’ve ever played on,” Eagles defender Haason Reddick said, according to The Athletic. “It was very disappointing. It’s the NFL. You would think it would be better so we could get some better play, but it is what it is.”

“I changed my cleats and right before the second half wore the different ones,” said Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert, according to Insider. “The second half, you know, the field was tearing up a little bit, but, you know, once again, we’re playing on the same field as the Chiefs.”

Eagles offensive tackle Jordan Mailata agreed, saying the field was “terrible.” He added, “I’m no grass expert. It was just slick. You couldn’t anchor. You had to get your whole foot in the ground. If you try and use just your toe, it would slip right away. You saw the receivers. It was like a water park out there, and we’re playing on grass.”

Kansas City defensive lineman Frank Clark added that this is not the first time they’ve had problems with grass in Arizona.

“We’ve had this problem in Arizona before. A lot of these stadiums try to do new tactics with the grass, they try to do new things. I’ve been playing football since I was seven. The best grass is grass that is naturally there,” he said. “At the end of the day, it was the field that we were given.”

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