No Synthetic Grass..

[Sean Pa Patriot]

I know the field looks like crap, and it would look much nicer on TV with the fake grass.. But count me out on the syntetic grass, I know Brady has a great record on it, but I want the real stuff, just re sod it and take care of it better, That is all.. But no fake stuff for me..

 

[Alk]

I know the field looks like crap, and it would look much nicer on TV with the fake grass.. But count me out on the syntetic grass, I know Brady has a great record on it, but I want the real stuff, just re sod it and take care of it better, That is all.. But no fake stuff for me..

I would be okay with the field turf stuff like Nebraska plays on. It looks and feels like grass and isn't nearly has hard on the players as the stuff that the Colts use.

 

[CTPatsFan]

I would think that RK has too much invested only to just yank it all out and field turf it.

But how about a Pats Blue field like Boise State's Smurf Turf. Or maybe one humongous Flying Elvis field. Hmmmm.....

 

[workhorse]

I would be okay with the field turf stuff like Nebraska plays on. It looks and feels like grass and isn't nearly has hard on the players as the stuff that the Colts use.

The Colts have been using the field turf for a couple years now.

 

[Brownfan80]

I would think that RK has too much invested only to just yank it all out and field turf it.

But how about a Pats Blue field like Boise State's Smurf Turf. Or maybe one humongous Flying Elvis field. Hmmmm.....

Now that could get interesting. Entierly possible with sythetic turf, too.

 

[Tunescribe]

I would think that RK has too much invested only to just yank it all out and field turf it.

But how about a Pats Blue field like Boise State's Smurf Turf. Or maybe one humongous Flying Elvis field. Hmmmm.....

NOOOOO!!!! That Boise State field is hideous. Trying to watch a game being played on a blue field would give me migraines.

 

[Seymour93]

Mike Compton said it best on NFL Countdown a few years back when field turf was starting to pop up around the league... paraphrasing... "It's still turf. It's turf dressed up."

Keep the grass.

 

[R_T26]

field turf is not that expensive, and cheap to maintain. I wouldnt mind it. Or maybe we can just hire the eagles groundkeeper.

 

[Alk]

Mike Compton said it best on NFL Countdown a few years back when field turf was starting to pop up around the league... paraphrasing... "It's still turf. It's turf dressed up."

Keep the grass.

The only problem is, the field they're playing on now is almost as bad as the old astroturf when they first came out with it. A field covered in broken glass would be better.

 

[mtbykr]

I have followed Nebraska forever and their fieldturf is awesome. With that said however I would still rather have grass! Something has to be done though because this is getting out of hand, it's been bad in the past but that's allways been late in the year--and never this bad. That field is a joke right now!

 

[marty]

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.

 

[CTPatsFan]

NOOOOO!!!! That Boise State field is hideous. Trying to watch a game being played on a blue field would give me migraines.

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.

 

[Pats726]

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.

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.

 

[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.

 

[ilduce06410]

Amen

I know the field looks like crap, and it would look much nicer on TV with the fake grass.. But count me out on the syntetic grass, I know Brady has a great record on it, but I want the real stuff, just re sod it and take care of it better, That is all.. But no fake stuff for me..

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.

 

[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]

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

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!