NFL Hall Of Fame Game Cancelled Due To Terrible Playing Surface [Update]

Tonight, after six months of bleak NFL news and training camp reports about how football is not sleeping (it never does), football is back! Rather, it would have been, if terrible turf conditions in Canton didn’t force the NFL to cancel the Hall of Fame Game preseason opener between the Colts and Packers.

It appears that field paint boiled over and became a hypersticky epoxy that would have made playing football impossible. Here are a bunch of concerned football men standing around and thinking very hard about the turf.

Kicking off the preseason with half a dozen injuries seems like a bad idea, so cancelling this game is a no-brainer. Still, if you were eagerly anticipating the end of this long football drought, you may be understandably disappointed.

Good news is, you can always watch Marshawn Lynch’s 67-yard Beastquake run against the Saints.

A reader characterizes the rush to get the stadium ready as a “mad dash.”

Update (8:58 p.m. EDT): The NFL and NFLPA released a joint statement regarding the cancellation of the game, via PFT:

Due to safety concerns with the condition of the playing surface in Canton, tonight’s game between the Indianapolis Colts and Green Bay Packers has been cancelled. We are very disappointed for our fans, but player safety is our primary concern, and as a result, we could not play an NFL game on this field tonight.

Apparently, the game was supposed to be played on some old Superdome indoor turf, which Saints owner Tom Benson donated. Fans were not promptly notified of the cancellation, and judging by this shot from shortly after ESPN announced that the game was cancelled, many probably expected the game to proceed as normal.

So if you are still in the stadium; game’s not happening man.