‘Borderline unplayable’ Acrisure Stadium turf contributes to missed Steelers field goal, perhaps to injury
The Acrisure Stadium natural surface appeared more worn than normal during and after Sunday’s Pittsburgh Steelers game against the Cleveland Browns. The field conditions certainly led to a missed Steelers field goal and perhaps might have contributed to a non-contact injury suffered by a Steelers captain.
“The field,” veteran quarterback Aaron Rodgers said, “got borderline unplayable.”
The Steelers’ Chris Boswell missed a 54-yard field goal late in the fourth quarter of what ended up a 23-9 Steelers win when Boswell slipped in a well-worn area of the field.
Chris Boswell's plant foot takes out a divot roughly 2 inches into the dirt because the Steelers turf serves no master but chaos pic.twitter.com/xFEb0WO7qg
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) October 12, 2025
After the game, Boswell tersely declined comment. Holder Corliss Williamson noted the less-than-ideal spot on the field.
The 41-year-old Rodgers acknowledged the conditions and compared it to that for winter games at Lambeau Field in Green Bay more during the 2000s when he was a young quarterback with the Packers.
“I just felt like it got real beat up,” Rodgers said after Sunday’s game about the grass at Acrisure Stadium. “By the time the third quarter rolled around, that thing was really beat up.
“It reminds me a little bit of the field in Green Bay in the early years, but not until, like, November or early December where it would get kind of torn up a little bit. Then they went out and found an incredible field maintenance guy that came over and helped our guys out, and the field in Green Bay is absolutely immaculate, but the field today got pretty torn up.”
During the second quarter Sunday, Steelers special-teams captain Miles Killebrew suffered what coach Mike Tomlin termed “a significant knee injury.” It should be noted there is no direct evidence that the field condition contributed to injury.
After the game, grounds crew members were performing some heavy maintenance on the field, removing turns around the perimeter of the playing area and digging holes at several places. CBS reported that the field was to be re-sodded in the coming days.
The next scheduled event at Acrisure is a Pitt home game against NC State on Oct. 25. The Steelers host the Green Bay Packers the next day.
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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