Brett Hartmann Files Revised NRG Turf Lawsuit
In a sports world and news cycle that move at breakneck speed, thanks to social media and the 24-hour news cycle, maintaining relevance is a pretty competitive endeavor. It takes a concerted effort to rent space in our brains these days.
Roy Luck
That makes it all the more amazing that one of the most prominent ongoing storyline arcs of this Texans season isn't even an actual person (who presumably could make the necessary extra effort to stay front of mind). It's an inanimate object, albeit one that continues to wreak mental and possibly physical havoc upon those who ply their trade on its surface.
Indeed, in the most recent Houston Texans game, at NRG Stadium last weekend, the turf was once again a huge topic after the game, both its condition and the latest non-contact injury to be sustained on the surface.
As I mentioned in "4 Winners, 4 Losers" after the Eagles game, I actually received a text from local attorney Gene Egdorf a couple of hours before the game that Sunday in which he was lamenting the condition of the turf, which was torn up, shredded and bafflingly unchanged from the day before, when the stadium hosted a college football game between Stephen F. Austin State and Sam Houston State. It was a surface, Egdorf contended, that was unsuitable and dangerous for an NFL game to be played on less than 24 hours later.
The gist of Egdorf's text? "When are the people who run NRG Stadium going to learn?"
Egdorf's opinion is relevant in the matter because he is the attorney for former Texans punter Brett Hartmann, who is suing the entities that run NRG Stadium (SMG and Harris County) for negligence after he suffered a career-ending knee injury in the Atlanta game in 2011 when his left knee buckled on the NRG Stadium turf. The injury, Hartmann claims, occurred because his foot got caught in one of the dozens of seams caused by the "pallet system" that NRG utilizes to deliver its grass surface on game day.
The system is essentially a puzzle of square pallets that are pieced together to form the field on which the Texans play their home games. The end result is, according to many players, a surface that is rife with treacherous seams, creases and soft spots. Hartmann is one of a handful of players who have suffered odd non-contact injuries on the NRG playing surface over the past few years. Back in 2009, then-Patriot Wes Welker tore his knee in the season finale. In the season opener this year, No. 1 overall pick Jadeveon Clowney tore the meniscus in his right knee when he landed wrong on the turf.
And sure enough, almost as if Egdorf had called his shot with his text message, popular former Texan and current Eagles linebacker DeMeco Ryans tore an Achilles when he landed wrong after an interception last Sunday, ending his season. It's Ryans's second Achilles rupture in his career, both occurring at the same end of the field on NRG's playing surface. The first was back in 2010 in a game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
As a result of the field conditions in that Eagles game and the resulting injury to Ryans, Egdorf has now amended Hartmann's lawsuit against SMG and the county to include the scathing comments of several Eagles players after the game on November 2, along with comments from Texans head coach Bill O'Brien regarding evaluation of the playing surface after the season.
Email to Friend
Write to Editor
Print ArticleAdvertisement
No Back Up for Scott Montoya 
In Search of William S. Burroughs 
That's (Not) Entertainment 
