PatsChick87

The newer turf is much more forgiving than what many of us may have used in our playing days. I never thought I'd say this but, I think it would be better than real grass if the Razor is going to be continually abused by other events outside of football.

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CTPatsFan

I'm just kidding, Tune. The Broncos field actually hurts the eyes when you look at it!

Being that it pays my bills, I'm a huge advocate of natural turf and hate to see conversions to plastic. Field turf is NOT maintenance free nor inexpensive to maintain. They have a 5-7 year life span depending on usage, require regular vacuuming and brushing, constant replacement of the crumb rubber fill (that makes the field 'give' and hold the 'turf' blades upright) and should actually be disinfected fairly often (they hold all kinds of funky bacteria).

Natural turf gets a bad rap when it is poorly maintained, whether intentional or not. We supply the bluegrass seed, soil amendments and foliar fertilizers to the contractor that maintains Rentschler Field where UConn plays "football" (they may suck but their field is awesome). In the roughly three years he's had the contract we've helped him push a stagnant 2" root system (the sod never left the layer it was harvested with and would slide when the players played on it) to over 12"+ and solid. The Rent has no where near the turf growing amenities that the Razor has and is used for concerts, H.S. football tourneys, soccer tourneys, etc. not unike Gillette. It is absolutely possible.

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18 year STH, although games are fewer and farther between.
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Pats726

So when it is said they can do nothing now at Gillette...do you think that is true???

IcyPatriot

The argument for natural grass was there would be less injuries...but there have been more injuries than ever before....so if we have more injuries than ever then why bother with natural grass???

Also...someone posted today or yeasterday about an increase in hamstring injuries. Hamstring injuries can come in a few ways but one way almost sure to cause a hammy is when the muscle is stretched to far due to slippage.

Naturally...linemen get injured more with artificial turf due to less give. Do the new surfaces take care of this problem??? If they do then it's a no brainer...and OH...BTW... MAKE THE FIELD "RED"

zippo59

I just wish we had a field that matches the quality of the stadium itself.

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Unofficial Kevin Faulk supporter.

waspie (UK)

We need a woven Desso surface, as used in quite a few soccer pitches in the UK; especially those who groundshare with a Rugby team - 4 games a month, 8 months a year. It's grass woven into a synthetic carpet, so it looks and plays like grass without cutting up. It would set the Pats back about $600 - $700k.

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ilduce06410

the synthetic grass in use today is far removed from astro-turf.
there's some stuff they're using now in several stadiums that looks just like grass on tv. the only tipoff for me is that players' uniiforms don't get dirty.
BUT that padding underneath is still a lot harder that earth. the poured cement below the padding is still cement.
please, please, keep the real stuff. i love seeing games played in mud, games where footing is an issue and length of cleats is a factor, etc, etc.
there's no excuse for painted dirt, hashmark to hashmark, the entire length of the field.
teams practicing on it every gol-danged DAY wouldn't chew it up at the 10-yard lines.
i remember BB had a groundskeeper FIRED around his second year.
SURELY, if BB wanted a lush field, there would be one.
say what he will, there's NO WAY BB would have a lousy field if he didn't want one. "i'm not a botanist", he said.
naw, he's just the head coach and shares complete management of football operations with SP.
in past years the field has remained a mess until the league office stepped in. the league's concern, of course, is about the field's appearance on tv.

SoonerPatriot

No field turf needed. What's needed is to get that ridiculous, completely irrelevant soccer team out of Gilette.

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jaychamp

I honestly believe the crappy field is intentional which would mean artificial turf is not even being discussed. I'm sure if it happens again, the NFL will step in, and all of a sudden the field will be in great condition for the next home game

Plus I'd be pretty upset if it was raining, and there was no mud. Where's the fun in that?

And to comment on a previous post, I don't remember ever seeing a hamstring injury caused from slippage. Groin injuries yes, but not hamstrings. Not saying it doesn't ever happen but I would imagine it's pretty rare. The theory I've heard and agree with is the reason why these muscle type injuries are happening more is because players are bulking up too much. I forget who said it but "you can't pull fat".

mtbykr

Soccer has zero to do with the field condition according to grounds experts. The problem is all the other crap they have going on at Gilette. They have all these concerts there with tons of equipment and people all over the place, it's no wonder it's torn up. They put down all the sand (that you see flying up during the game) before the stones concert to try and lessen the damage to the grass. The problem is it rained like crazy before they could get it back up and it got sunk down into the base of the grass...now there's nothing they can do about it.

They can't re-sod it becuase the sod would not take root and by the end of a game chunks would be coming up all over the place. That coupled with the fact that there is always something else going on over there (concerts, filming a movie, soccer, ect...) means that there is no down time for the field. In other words, even if they planted new grass seed--it wouldn't have time to grow and root because there are always people walking all over the field.

I hate field turn (although Nebraska's is pretty impressive) but if they are going to keep using gillette for all these other events then it seems like the only alternative---although it won't help us this year!

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