Since Heinz Field (now Acrisure Stadium) opened in 2001, the Steelers have shared the venue with Pitt. And it often shows.
On Sunday, the Steelers' home game was played on turf that looked and played horribly. Kicker Chris Boswell slipped and fell during a field goal attempt. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers called the surface "borderline unplayable."
Former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger agrees.
"You can't have a professional football team, not just the Steelers but the opponents, play on a surface like that," Roethlisberger said on his Footbahlin podcast. "Because you're paying them a lot of money and if people get hurt, it's not a good thing."
Roethlisberger has a simple solution.
"And the only thing I can think of is — and I've been saying this for a while — I don't think Pitt should play there anymore. . . . I'm saying this for Pitt's sake as well. I firmly believe that Pitt should put like a 35,000-person stadium up [in] Oakland. Pack that thing, because when you've got 65,000 or 70,000 in Acrisure and it's only half full, what's that look like? . . . Put a 25,000-person stadium and then have it just bumping, crazy, loud. Fans everywhere. The students won't to drive anywhere, they can walk . . . to the stadium, walk to the game, walk back to their dorms. And then you keep them off of that field for the Steelers."
Roethlisberger recognizes that it may not be easy to move the college team, given the taxpayer deal that built the stadium. Still, and as Roethlisberger said, "[T]hey've got to figure out how to separate those things and make that field better, because you can't put that product out there for the best kicker in the game to miss field goals."
Yes, grass fields are better than turf. But that doesn't mean grass fields should be bad grass. Every NFL team should play on high-quality grass. It ridiculous that they don't, especially in the stadiums where the field is already grass.