Heinz Field surface 'like a beach'
About two hours before Monday night's game against the Miami Dolphins, Steelers kicker Jeff Reed looked at the freshly resodded Heinz Field playing surface and said, "It (stinks)."
To be sure, the field wasn't going to win any beauty contests. It was pockmarked and water-logged and every bit as brown as it was green.
"Unbelievable," was how Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger later described it.
"Terrible," said receiver Hines Ward.
"It was like playing on the beach," said Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter.
It also led to at least one memorable play -- a punt by Miami's Brandon Fields that traveled 38 yards in the air before sticking nose-first in the mud late in the third quarter.
Through three quarters, neither team had scored. That made it the first NFL game since 1998 and one of two in the past 20 years to go that long without a point.
The Steelers finally prevailed, 3-0, on Reed's 24-yard field goal with 17 seconds left in regulation.
Even though players kicked up water and clumps of grass, they did not lose their footing as regularly as one might have expected from looking at the pre-game conditions.
Players often were able to cut, albeit gingerly, without major problems. One example was a 33-yard punt return by the Steelers' Allen Rossum late in the second quarter. Rossum sprinted all the way across the field, then cut up the seam.
The first full resodding of the seven-year-old field began Saturday afternoon after the Pitt-South Florida game -- and four WPIAL championship games on Friday -- and was completed late Sunday night. The new sod will remain in place for the rest of the season, after which the Steelers are expected to consider replacing their mostly natural grass surface with grass-like artificial turf.
During the resodding, an additional layer of sod -- 2 1/2 acres worth in 4-feet-by-25-feet pieces -- was placed over the DD Grassmaster, the original surface that consists mainly of grass and is tied to the ground.
An all-day rain provided a stiff challenge to the grounds crew, even though the field was covered with a tarp. When workers removed the tarp 70 minutes before kickoff, a muddy, tattered surface, dotted with oblong puddles -- some longer than 5 yards -- lay underneath.
"Once the water gets underneath the field, it's like a marsh," Ward said.
Workers soon emerged with rakes and shovels and cleared as much water as they could. They dumped sand on the deeper puddles.
To compound matters, lightning caused a delay of the start time, from shortly after 8:30 to 8:55.
Both coaches were wary of attempting field goals. Reed's plant foot appeared to give way on a missed 44-yarder with 29 seconds remaining in the third quarter. The ball sailed wide left. Miami went for it on 4th-and-11 at the Steelers 25 with 11:26 left in the game, rather than attempt a 42-yard field goal.
Roethlisberger somehow managed to complete 18 of 21 passes.
"It was muddy," he said. "But it was fun."
