Every year when the NFL plays a game at London’s Wembley Stadium, there are questions about the field conditions. We can now add Buccaneers running back Earnest Graham to the list of those who don’t like the Wembley turf.
In the first quarter of today’s game against the Bears, Graham slipped on the field untouched and came up holding his knee. Graham was helped to the locker room and couldn’t put any weight on his injured knee as he left the field.
The injury is terribly disappointing for Graham and the Bucs, but not terribly surprising: We’ve all known the field surface at Wembley is a problem. As one British media outlet put it in regards to the first NFL game played at Wembley, “The turf cut up so badly underfoot as to make passing fraught with danger.”
Although the Wembley grass has been replaced since then, and it was supposedly in much better shape for today’s game, it still looks today like players are slipping around more than they usually do on turf designed for American football.