HOUSTON (SPORTSRADIO610.com) – The Houston Texans will play the Philadelphia Eagles Sunday on the same field Sam Houston State beat Stephen F. Austin 42-28 on Saturday. Eighteen hours after the two Texas schools met in their annual Battle of the Piney Woods game, the Texans are wondering if their number one over all draft pick Jadeveon Clowney will play in front of home fans for the first time since hurting his knee on the field in week 1 against the Washington Redskins.

The Texans routinely play games the day after college games on the same field and say that the field for this week’s game is “no concern” to them. 2014 is the fourth year in a row the Texans have had a home game the day after a college game was played at NRG stadium. Last season the Battle of the Piney Woods was played the day before the Texans hosted the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday Night Football, a full day between the final play and the next kickoff.

Immediately after Clowney’s injury in week 1, Texans safety DJ Swearinger said that the field was the cause of the injury that cost Clowney six weeks of his rookie year. Swearinger then told ESPN radio, “I definitely think they need to do something about it. We like the grass, but I think there definitely could be a better way to put the grass down, When we go out there for walk-through, some days we may see a hole and we ask coach ‘What’s going on today? Can they fix this?'”

NRG Field is a unique system of interlocking palates of grass that are put together to make up the entire field. Because of this palate system there can sometimes be seams or holes where two palates come together. SMG, the company that runs NRG Stadium and manages the field, has enough palates for two fields as well as an entire system of field turf. The turf system was not used for the college game on Saturday because of time constraints on changing out the palates, the Texans said. The grass palates need at least two days to allow the field to grow together after they are placed on the floor of NRG stadium. Field turf was used in the Advocare Texas Kickoff this year on August 30th, a full week before the Texans kicked off their season at home against the Redskins.

“The maintenance of that field, the design of that field is an abomination. And it’s not just an abomination of how it looks, it’s the affect it has on these players.” Gene Egdorf, the attorney who represents former Texans Punter Brett Hartmann told SportsRadio 610’s The Triple Threat in September. Hartmann, who played for the Texans in 2011, has filed suit against SMG, claiming the ‘unsafe turf’ contributed to a career-ending injury.

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