GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium will host a college football game on a rainy night in Missouri tonight. One day later, the Kansas City Chiefs will host the Denver Broncos on the same field.
The Broncos have prepared for the possibility of bad field conditions on Sunday, and coach Sean Payton has emphasized to his players the importance of wearing proper cleats against the Chiefs.
“Field turf is easy, it’s the certain shoe,” Payton said after Friday’s practice. “Most of the grass we play on, it’s a certain shoe. This one is different. Our owner would tell you, ‘You have to have the right tires to win,’ Lewis Hamilton. You have to have the right shoes on. It’s so important, and they‘re expecting more rain Saturday. There’s a game there Saturday. [It’ll be] 58 degrees Sunday, clear, three percent chance of rain, 11 mph winds. We’ll have a good day, but that field will have seen better days.”
Payton went on to share a few stories of fields being impacted by poor field conditions (and improper cleats) earlier in his coaching career.
“We’ve done this over the years,” Payton said. “You show tape. I remember we’re playing Green Bay. It’s third-and-1, Cincinnati had a back Corey Dillon, they ran a short-yardage lead play. On a lead play, you take a drop step. His feet went out [and] they had to kick a field goal. Green Bay came back and scored; it made the difference in a game. One of the more overrated fields every year in our league are the Super Bowl fields. Oftentimes, they’re new. We went through it in Miami. Mike Bell, who’s a real good running back — we’re running a fourth-down play, and I look and he’s got the comfortable [shoes] on. There’s a long history in our league [with] the right shoes.
“The old Giants — the Polo Grounds — had some shoes shipped in. I told these guys this story. We played the Vikings in the NFC Championship game [in] 2000. We were [a] heavy underdog, but we were the [No.] 1 seed at home, and it had frozen. It was grass, but it had frozen. I had never seen a field like it. It was crispy. The normal [cleats] — even the screw-ins — they make a baseball [cleat], not the metal, but the same as [a football cleat]. Those kind of cut through the ice. The footing was significant. We were 31-0 at the half and 41-0 at the end of the game. Footing had a lot to do with that. The footing, as you look at — you can look at the film and see what Tampa Bay was wearing. ‘Burt’ (Michael Burton) just played there [in Kansas City]. I think the proper footing is huge.”
Payton is obsessed with the details, something we’ve known about the coach since he first joined the Broncos in 2023. We’ll see if the proper cleats pay off against the Chiefs on Sunday.
