{"id":901373,"date":"2026-09-22T14:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901373\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T14:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:26:12","slug":"nfl-field-director-confident-in-playing-surface-conditions-for-brazil-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901373\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL field director confident in playing surface conditions for Brazil game"},"content":{"rendered":"

NFL officials on Monday \u201coffered little concern about the playing surface\u201d for Sunday\u2019s Cowboys-Ravens game at Maracan\u00e3 Stadium<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro and \u201cexpect the game to go as scheduled.\u201d The league took over field operations on Monday, and NFL Field Director Nick Pappas looked at the field with his staff and said, \u201cI don\u2019t have any suspicions that we won\u2019t be playing football on Sunday.\u201d Pappas said that league officials \u201chave been in Rio de Janeiro for weeks monitoring the conditions of the field, including Sunday when there was a soccer game.\u201d Pappas said that the league is \u201cworking on putting down the lines and logos, installing goal posts and getting the mow pattern down in preparation for Sunday\u2019s game\u201d (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 9\/21<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The field at Maracan\u00e3 Stadium \u201chas been hit by unusually heavy rainfall over the past six weeks,\u201d and Pappas said that the NFL \u201chad shipped a tarp to Rio about a week ago to help protect the turf.\u201d The 78,000-seat stadium regularly hosts soccer teams Flamengo and Fluminense, \u201caveraging two games a week.\u201d The \u201cheavy schedule combined with relentless downpours has strained the natural grass surface.\u201d The game will be the NFL\u2019s third in Brazil, though the previous two were at Sao Paulo\u2019s Neo Quimica Arena, where the turf was also criticized<\/a> (AP, 9\/21<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NFL officials on Monday \u201coffered little concern about the playing surface\u201d for Sunday\u2019s Cowboys-Ravens game at Maracan\u00e3 Stadium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,596,593,85],"class_list":["post-901373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}