The NFL Should Be Embarrassed by Awful Super Bowl Field

The Chiefs beat the Eagles, 38–35, Sunday night in Super Bowl LVII in what was a thrilling game that was slightly marred by a controversial call in the final seconds and completely marred by horrible field conditions from basically the opening kickoff that should have the NFL feeling embarrassed Monday morning.

The league’s biggest game of the season was played on such a slippery and awful surface that we saw players losing their footing and falling all over the place.

Just look at what happened to Eagles kicker Jake Elliott on a kickoff. This shouldn’t happen in any NFL game, let alone the gosh-darn Super Bowl:

The NFL should be ashamed for this joke of a field for the SUPER BOWL. pic.twitter.com/GgnyYc09M4
— Michael Hurley (@michaelFhurley) February 13, 2023

It's been a rough year for the NFL. The refs have been terrible, despite what Roger Goodell said during Super Bowl week, and played a huge part in the outcome of this game with that holding call in the final minutes.

While bad calls are going to happen, the league should have done a better job of controlling something it could have controlled—making sure the field wouldn’t be like a hockey rink.

This field wasn’t put together in a few days, either. Quite the opposite! This thing was well thought out and taken care for a long time leading up to Sunday night:

The NFL has spent two years preparing the grass for tonight's field at the Super Bowl.

The grass was grown at a local sod farm in Phoenix.

It was installed two weeks ago, and the field has been rolled out each morning for daily sunshine.

Total cost = $800,000 pic.twitter.com/Um8zZala2O
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) February 12, 2023

Two years!

Yet with all that planning and care the grass surface became the star of the show ... for all the wrong reasons.

Eagles LB Haason Reddick called it “the worst field” he’s ever played on:

That is a brutal look for the NFL.

NFL fans blasted it, too:

It’s great that the game was played on grass. All NFL stadiums, for many different reasons (including player health), should be grass surfaces.

But we just can’t have the conditions that we had Sunday night in Arizona.

That field was awful and a total embarrassment.