For years, teams have been complaining about the turf at Gillette Stadium. In years past, the sloppy turf was an advantage for the Patriots, as soft teams like the Colts came into town and moaned and complained about the difficulty of playing at Gillette Stadium. The reason: the field conditions.
But now, the Patriots have given in to the complaints of their own players and relinquished their greatest home field advantage. They are replacing the grass with field turf:
When the team was winning Super Bowls they were proud to be "mudders." Now they lose a couple games and it's because of "field conditions?" Boo Hoo. Why don't we put up a dome too so the players don't have to get cold and wet. That would improve the "conditions."After Sunday's driving rain that turned the new sod at Gillette Stadium into a quagmire, Patriots Football Weekly has learned that the Patriots finally decided to pull the trigger and do away with natural grass and will install FieldTurf.
Work crews were on hand Tuesday morning bulldozing what was left of the mangled surface with the intention of installing FieldTurf, a synthetic grass surface used in roughly half of the NFL's stadiums. The new surface will be ready for the team's next home game, Nov. 26 against the Chicago Bears....
Ever since [2003] the conditions have been periodically called into question. But the debates heated up this season when a heavy offseason concert load, the New England Revolution's home schedule and the filming of the Disney movie "The Game Plan" left the field in abysmal shape. Even the opener against Buffalo was played on a chewed up field that more resembled midseason.
After Sunday's game, some of the players (including Brady) were mentioning "field conditions" as some sort of a mitigating factor. Since Brady became the starter, the Pats are 12-2 at home when it rains or snows, including Sunday's game. The field has suddenly started to cost them? That's soft.
The field has been awful because the Patriots wanted it that way. They play soccer in KC and in Denver, and the weather is just as iffy, yet those fields are fine. There are two football teams that use Heinz Field, not to mention HS state championships, yet it seemed to hold up under the rain Sunday a-ok.
We've got a state of the art field with heaters so it won't freeze and drainage that can suck out tons of water if that's what the team wants to do. For whatever reason, they don't. There are HS and college fields all over the state that get a whole lot more use than Gillette does that don't fall apart like that.
And after all of that work building up a home field advantage, they give it away after a muddy loss.
Tags: Football NFL New England Patriots Field Turf
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