Eagles players rip State Farm Stadium’s turf, ‘the worst’ field conditions

GLENDALE, Ariz. — From Eagles edge rusher Haason Reddick falling to his knees while rushing the quarterback to kicker Jake Elliott slipping on his left plant foot before a kickoff, the poor field conditions inside State Farm Stadium were clear to everyone watching Super Bowl LVII.

“I’m not going to lie — this is the worst field I’ve ever played on,” Reddick said, following the Eagles’ 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night.

Reporters asked Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni, along with a few of his players, if the subpar conditions caused the team problems.

The 6-foot-1, 240 pound Reddick, who had 16 sacks this season, said that during the game, he would beat a Chiefs blocker, but found himself slipping on the corners, leaving him on the ground before the play was over.

“Y’all saw it, a lot of slipping all over that field,” Reddick, who finished with one tackle, said. “It didn’t even matter, [if] I changed my cleats ... Still was slipping, so I don’t know. I don’t want to use it as an excuse — I’m not that type of guy.

“It was very disappointing, you would think it would be better, so we could get some better play, but it is what it is, man.”

State Farm Stadium, home of the Arizona Cardinals, is a grass field and not a regular turf, like many NFL stadiums have. The grass is grown at a local sod farm in Phoenix, meaning it was likely harvested into rolls.

The NFL spent two years preparing the grass for the Super Bowl and it was installed two weeks ago. According to a Tweet by Joe Pompliano, the field was rolled out each morning for daily sunshine. Growing and installing the turf cost $800,000.

The stadium uses a roll-out playing field, which is outside for the week before being rolled indoors and into the building. It rolls on 546 steel wheels, which rest on 13 railroad-like tracks, and the field travels 740 feet inside or out of the stadium in approximately 70 minutes at the push of a button.

» READ MORE: In an all-time great Super Bowl, the Eagles weren’t good enough. Oh, what could have been.

Besides Reddick, other Eagles players changed their cleats before the second half, including tight end Dallas Goedert, who had six receptions for 60 yards.

Even when the 28-year-old, along with most of the team, wore a seven-stud cleat, hoping to have a better grip on the field, he still found himself losing traction and watching teammates slip alongside of him.

“You come to a place like this when you’re indoor with real grass, it’s not always the deepest, thickest, the roots aren’t that long so sometimes they come up,” Goedert said. “Once again, it had no reason for the outcome of the game. It was things we did that lost us the game. We’re not making any excuses; we just got to come back better.”

Offensive tackle Jordan Mailata added, “We can’t control the field; we just have to accept the reality of the situation, whoever can perform the best wins the game, and we fell short.”

Fans and media took to Twitter, with many saying that the league’s inability to take care of the field affected the biggest football game of the year.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ James Bradberry owns up to pulling the jersey in the Super Bowl. To the ref, it was a clear penalty.

While there isn’t a definite answer as to why the field was slippery, it certainly contributed toward the players’ ability to perform. Ultimately, though, all the players on both teams dealt with the conditions.

“We both had to play on that turf,” Sirianni said. “It’s not like we were playing on ice and they were playing on grass. We all had to play on it ... Same thing if you had to change a game plan or change a play, or whatever you had to do. It was just adjusting to slippage that was going on.”