John Harbaugh, now coaching at his alma mater Michigan, cut San Francisco’s final public practice at the stadium last year short because the field was in such bad shape and littered with divots that it was causing players to lose their footing.
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The 49ers usual practice fields cannot accommodate the 20,000 fans who had been planned for Sunday’s workout at Levi’s Stadium.
The 49ers felt they had solved last year’s issue after they reexamined the soil composition beneath the grass, trucked in loads of new dirt and created a less sandy mix.
Tomsula was not made available to the media after practice because he was with his family, which was attending a training-camp practice for the first time this summer.
The latter stages of the 49ers’ two-hour practice tonight at Levi’s Stadium were conducted at half-speed, but a team official said the slow pace was due to the team’s shortage of inside linebacker and not concerns about the condition of the grass field.
“We extend our honest apologies to those fans who were scheduled to attend Sunday’s practice”, Jim Mercurio, vice president of stadium operations and general manager of Levi’s Stadium, said in a statement.
“We remain confident that our turf management program will provide a playing surface that meets the team’s standards, as we enter the 2015 NFL season”, Mercurio said.
On Wednesday, rookie running back Mike Davis slipped on running play around a chewed-up area of sod near the south end zone. This is going to be a long, long season as far as this field goes and as much as you guys are sick hearing about it, I’m sick of talking about it.
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It’s not out of the ordinary for a team to replace a field a few times over the course of the season because of regular wear and tear. They returned to Levi’s Wednesday for an event in front of season-ticket holders. New sod will be installed after next weekend’s Taylor Swift concerts and ahead of the exhibition home opener against the Dallas Cowboys. The NFL will arrive approximately a month before the game and take over operations inside the stadium, including managing the field.
