there were major deformations<\/a> happening, large divoting outside of what we typically see at many of our NFL grass fields \u2014 although not something we haven\u2019t seen before,\u201d Pappas told Graham. \u201cThat lent itself to say there was an opportunity to improve that surface, and that\u2019s what the Bills have stepped up to do and made that decision to replace it.\u201d<\/p>\nPappas explained that, whenever a new stadium is built, \u201cThere\u2019s a period before it gets turned over to Bills staff. So, you\u2019re now reliant on the general contractor or the installation company for maintenance over a certain period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He attributed the situation to a \u201ccombination of the sod quality from the start, the challenges, and maybe the management up until the Bills\u2019 grounds crew were able to take over, and then you couple it with a very new growing environment that needs to be worked through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pappas said the new sod \u201cwill come in thicker\u201d than the prior version.<\/p>\n
The next challenge becomes preparing the field for three home games in three weeks: Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4.<\/p>\n
Pappas thinks another replacement will likely happen during the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecovery needs to outpace usage,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if the weather is great and all goes well over that three-game stand, maybe they\u2019re looking at Week 8 to replace it, or they can look at the weather and say, \u2018Hey, based on where we are today, we have three weeks to recover. We can bring the grow lights out. We can provide our agronomic program with fertility and grow it back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Given the weather challenges in Buffalo, Pappas said he wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the Bills need three or four fields per year.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one of the reasons why some teams prefer artificial turf. It\u2019s cheaper. It doesn\u2019t require constant evaluation. <\/p>\n
But if teams and owners care about giving their players the surface they prefer, it\u2019s worth the money and the effort. Despite the challenges the Bills are facing, they deserve credit for trying to give the players the best possible surface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In six days, the Bills will host the first regular-season game at their new stadium. On the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-844931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}