Playing Surface
On November 14, 2006, two days after a rainstorm contributed to the deterioration of the grass surface in a Patriots loss against the New York Jets, team management decided to replace the natural grass surface with a synthetic surface, FieldTurf. The Patriots' first game on the surface was a victory over the previously 9–1 Chicago Bears on November 26. At the conclusion of the 2007 season, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had a career record of 31–3 on artificial turf. The team lost a preseason matchup in August 2007 to the Tennessee Titans on the new FieldTurf but otherwise won its first eleven regular-season and playoff games on the surface covering the period of November 2006 until September 2008, when the Patriots lost to the Miami Dolphins.
In February 2010, the surface was pulled and upgraded to FieldTurf "Duraspine Pro," which was expected to meet FIFA standards that the previous turf did not, preventing the team from having to place sod on top of their turf to host international soccer matches.
Read more about this topic: Gillette Stadium
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or surface:
“We are playing with fire when we skip the years of three, four, and five to hurry children into being age six.... Every child has a right to his fifth year of life, his fourth year, his third year. He has a right to live each year with joy and self-fulfillment. No one should ever claim the power to make a child mortgage his today for the sake of tomorrow.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)