After years of concerns about the viability and safety of its playing surface — not to mention truckloads of jokes about dirt and spray paint — the Washington Football Team is finally digging into the problem.
It will begin replacing more than a foot of grass and soil at FedEx Field this week in the first reconstruction of its kind since the stadium opened in 1997.
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The project is expected to take approximately two months, and team officials say it should allow the grass to hold up through the end of the team’s lease at the stadium in 2027.
The field has drawn criticism from numerous players and coaches over the past decade. Most notably, it is considered to be among the reasons Robert Griffin III tore the ACL in his right knee during a 2012 playoff game, an injury that significantly altered the trajectory of the rookie quarterback’s career.
“We’ve resodded more often, and we’ve done other things strategically to improve the surface, and it’s gotten better the last couple of years,” Chris Bloyer, the team’s senior vice president for operations and guest experience, told The Athletic. “But this is really a big move in the direction of a vast improvement. Let’s say they were not baby steps, but close, in how it was getting better year over year the last few years. This is a significant renovation and will be much different.”
The team has resodded the field in recent years, but the reconstruction, which will begin Monday and will be led by head groundskeeper Pete Benevento, will include the removal of not just the grass layer but 14 inches of topsoil and subsoil. That’s approximately 5,000 cubic yards of earth — the capacity of 500 dump trucks — and will strip the field down to a heating system that Bloyer said still works as intended.
“We’re moving the existing irrigation system, the existing drainage system,” said Bloyer, who is overseeing the project. “(We’re) replacing all of that with brand new systems and then new sod. Renovations in prior years were sod and some element of the root zone. This is an entire renovation down to the bottom — down to the foundation, if you will, if you think about it like a house.”
Once the playing surface has been removed, 500 tons of soil, more than 2 miles of drainage pipe and a new irrigation system will be installed. Those will be topped by GameOnGrass, a type of proprietary Bermuda grass developed by Carolina Green that has also been installed at the stadiums of the Eagles, Chiefs and Titans. The company also handled the Panthers’ practice field.
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After all these years and countless jabs about the turf — following the aforementioned playoff game, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll described the field conditions as “horrible” — why now?
The resurfacing at FedEx Field became a priority shortly after coach Ron Rivera was hired in January 2020, Bloyer said. The team recently completed the reconstruction of its practice fields in Ashburn, Va., which debuted this weekend during rookie minicamp, and has targeted the preseason opener against the Patriots on Aug. 12 to be the first full-scale use of the new grass.
“The end of last year and the beginning of this year was the right time to do the park, so we got both of those scheduled and we’re really excited to get them done,” Bloyer said. “Really happy with how the park turned out and really excited to see the stadium get accomplished or completed the same way as well.”
Given full autonomy from owner Dan Snyder, Rivera, now a full season into his tenure, and team president Jason Wright made recommendations on the overall project as it relates to their respective sides of the business.
“I think it’s great the organization is putting in a new playing surface this year,” tight end Logan Thomas said. “I know I speak for the whole team when I say that we all appreciate the organization investing resources in making the stadium and field as safe as possible.”
Bloyer, who would not share the cost of the renovation, said he has “talked to everybody that you can imagine” about how to best replace and maintain the field, including professors of turfgrass science. He even reached out to his counterparts at Tottenham Hotspur, the Premier League team whose stadium, which opened in 2019, will begin hosting the NFL’s annual London games in the fall.
Griffin wasn’t the only quarterback to fall victim to FedEx Field’s poor surface. Kirk Cousins blamed it for an interception he threw in 2017, telling 106.7 The Fan during a weekly radio interview that it “probably doesn’t look like a professional NFL field should.” Kicker Kai Forbath, who played parts of four seasons in Washington, said in 2017 when he returned with the Vikings that the surface is “dirt and they spray-paint it green,” and Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson, after Griffin’s injury, said playing on it “should be illegal.”
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Bloyer said he doesn’t know how long the reconstruction of the field will last, though he hopes it will withstand the team’s games — and any additional events FedEx Field hosts, including college football games and concerts — for the next six seasons.
After that is when Washington is expected to move into a long-awaited new stadium, though its location and what it will look like have not yet been determined.
“We continuously do soil testing and we will determine through that soil testing when this needs to be done again,” Bloyer said. “Theoretically, this should take us through the end of the stadium — theoretically — but for whatever reason, if two years from now, our soil testing and compaction reveals that we need to do it again, that’s what we would do.”
There’s still time to watch NFL games at FedEx Field. As for kicking dirt on Washington’s turf woes, the clock is running out.
(Photo of Taylor Heinicke, left, and Kevin Minter: Geoff Burke / USA Today)
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