Sunday's wild-card game between the Washington Redskins and Seattle Seahawks took place on a noticeably beat-up surface at FedEx Field.
On NFL Network
NFL Replay will re-air the
Seattle Seahawks' 24-14 win over the
Washington Redskins from Wild Card Weekend on Tuesday, Jan. 8 at 8 p.m. ET.
Many of the game's onlookers blamed the field for knee injuries suffered by Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III and Seahawks defensive end Chris Clemons. Clemons wore 3/4-inch cleats on the messy turf, leaving his agent, Donal Henderson, to rip the "crappy" conditions.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll clearly was agitated with what his players encountered.
"It was horrible, it's a horrible field," Carroll told KIRO-AM in Seattle on Monday. "It was as bad as a field could get for being dry. And it's too bad. It's really too bad, and we deserve better. ... It was worn out. There was a lot of slipping and all that kind of stuff.
"And it was relative. It didn't change the game at all, in my opinion, because it was relative, both sides, but we should just expect to see a better field at that time of year."
Carroll went on to describe the ground as "real sheer, and there was just a kind of dirt on top of the grass, so it was just not good footing."
(While we're at it, take a look at this photo by NFL.com's Jeff Darlington, comparing Sunday's postgame surface at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium with the ground at FedEx.)
"It wasn't a perfect field," Redskins coach Mike Shanahan told reporters Monday. "We all know that."
NFL.com's Ian Rapoport heard from league spokesman Greg Aiello, who said Monday that neither team filed an official complaint over the playing conditions.
"It is the responsibility of the home team to maintain the field," Aiello said. "It's a grass field. It's winter. There were no complaints about it by either team. ... Injuries occur, unfortunately, on every field."
The Seahawks, as Aiello points out, have yet to file an official complaint, but one might not be far off.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.
