Levi's Stadium played host to Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, and one of the running storylines was the state of the field conditions. During the first half, players on both teams were slipping on the field, and changing their cleats a couple times. At halftime, Beyonce conducted a significant portion of her performance on the grass with her backup dancers, all in high heels. I was a little concerned about what it might mean to the state of the field in the second half.
Fortunately, things seemed to calm down to a certain degree. After the game, there were some mixed reactions from Broncos players. Broncos linebacker Von Miller mentioned having to change his cleats, but
"Yeah, I had to change my cleats. It was a great field. We came out here yesterday and it was fast. As the game went on, I just needed a little more support. Adidas does a great job of getting me all kinds of cleats, and I was able to get the detachable [spikes] and real quick change them."
On the other hand, Broncos cornerback Aqib Talib was not at all pleased with the playing surface.
"The footing on the field was terrible," Broncos cornerback Aqib Talib said. "San Fran has to play eight games on that field so they better do something to get it fixed. It was terrible."
Panthers head coach Ron Rivera did not see any problems with the surface, although one has to imagine he did not want to come across as pointing figures away from his own team's performance.
"We didn't have any issues with the field," Panthers coach Ron Rivera said. "Both teams played on the same field. As far as I'm concerned, for me to be able to blame the field is kind of a cop-out. The truth of the matter is we both played on the surface. The surface was outstanding."
The NFL was in charge of the grass, but one has to wonder if there are underlying surface issues that might play into the turf problems. I suppose they could have just gotten a bad batch of grass, but given the 49ers numerous problems in 2014 and preseason 2015, it is hard to give this the benefit of the doubt. It could just be a bad underlying surface. Who knows.