If you were watching the Green Bay Packers’ opening game of the regular season on Friday, it was impossible not to notice the condition of the field at Arena Corinthians in Brazil. Maybe that’s the same turf condition the field staff keeps up for the soccer club Corinthians, the primary tenant of the stadium, but it wasn’t suitable for an NFL game where 200-plus-pound players were regularly attempting — and I stress attempting — to change direction quickly.
If you missed the game, here’s a quick sampling of players falling to the ground because of the playing surface. All clips in the video linked below are just from the first half. There were still slips in the second half, but I felt that the point was made well enough after just one half of play to stop finding clips of players surprisingly falling to the ground.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said before the game that the league plans on expanding its international schedule well beyond the eight-game slate that they have already approved for the 2025 season. Soccer is the world’s game, and I’m sure that these surfaces are fine for that sport, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that quality soccer surfaces and football surfaces are held to different standards. If the NFL continues to play games in soccer stadiums without any sort of regulations on the playing surfaces to make sure they’re fit for football games, there’s no reason to believe we’re going to be fed anything less than these sloppy, dangerous games where players are slipping and sliding for 60 minutes.
Rich Cimini, ESPN Staff WriterSep 20, 2024, 01:41 AM ETCloseRich Cimini is a staff writer who covers the New York Jets and the NFL at ESPN. Rich has covered the
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