One SI writer spent four days undercover, embedded with the team’s field staff and getting a crash course on everything from scrubbing out paint to manning the field goal nets.
Sam Darnold takes a snap from the 47-yard line. He fakes a handoff and his feet glide across the Norseman logo in the center of the Minnesota Vikings’ home field. He can barely look for a place to throw before Indianapolis Colts tackle Grover Stewart swallows him up and jars the ball free, allowing cornerback Kenny Moore II to scoop up the ball with a clear path to the end zone.
It’s Halloween morning, the Thursday of Week 9, and the first snow of the year is falling in Eagan, Minn., home of the Vikings’ team offices and practice facility. Yesterday, it was 70 degrees. Today, big flakes come down on the team’s five outdoor fields. With an indoor game next on the schedule, the team makes the sensible decision that practice will be held inside.
Grant takes me to his office—attached to a large storeroom that’s part garage, part workshop, with an array of vehicles parked inside. There’s a room where he and the rest of his grounds crew have desks, with windows overlooking the grass practice fields and the Vikings’ main office building beyond. Chip, Grant’s 10-year-old blue Weimaraner, who is officially listed as Turf Dog on the team’s website, has a bed under the window.
If the team was practicing outside, his crew would be tending to the precious grass. Mowing and blowing clippings off it, then keeping an eye on practice to fill in divots as needed. But the snow has given us a partially free afternoon, so we make the drive over to U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis.
The 25-yard lines already had to be scrubbed between games, so Grant’s team could add the NFL’s shield logos which must be on every game field. So, they figured, why scrub twice as many lines as needed? Why not just paint the 25s? Game after game across the NFL featured the first actual snap of action with the painted stripe not on the nose of the ball but five yards behind the center’s butt. Everywhere except Minnesota.
Today’s mission is to convert it from the high school football setup to the Vikings’ practice specifications. Most of the field markings are permanently in-laid. The purple end zones and the logo at midfield are simply the color of the turf when there’s no paint applied. The hash marks are not, and our first job is to scrub out the high school lines.
Finally, it’s my turn in the driver’s seat. The machine does not have pedals or a steering wheel; all mobility functions are managed using handles. I move my arms left and right, forward and back, getting used to propelling the brushes and the machine itself across the field. I am getting comfortable with my litany of tasks. We have to swap out the high school-sized goalposts for NFL uprights, which is made easy by hand-cranking a hydraulic pump that tilts the goalposts down to field level. Pieces of posts unscrew and as a team, we hoist them up and slide them into place. I finish things off by Velcroing the heavy purple VIKINGS pad into place.
I have never mowed a lawn in any fashion, I make clear to everyone entrusting me with what feels like the machine with which I can do the most permanent damage. They give me a pair of earplugs and pretty simple directions: Keep the mower moving when the blades are down and lift the blades before I reach the concrete beyond the back of the end zone.
They’ve painted the Norseman white and silver. One year he convinced the league to let him outline it pink during a breast cancer awareness campaign. In need of a temporary home, the Vikings played against the New York Giants at Ford Field in Detroit. The team stencils and paint flew to Detroit, and the Lions’ crew applied their logos to the field.
The yellow soccer lines have vanished. It feels like the stadium has people here around the clock, and when I arrive Saturday morning the field has been properly scrubbed and groomed—of course, not for the last time before kickoff. The wordmarks are not particularly challenging, and he has already created a partial outline of each letter, using stencils provided by the league that place semicircles along various edges and corners. His steady hand creates the sharp edges as he gives me a tutorial. At first, he handles the outlines and lets me fill in the insides. He tells me to take my time, but not go so slowly that the paint globs up.
Grant and I walk the field. He quizzes me to see if I’ve picked up on some of the finer points. Like, for example, that the Norseman logo is not actually centered on the 50-yard line. It is shifted one yard over so the braid of hair that comes down is on the 50. That looks nicer. It required league approval, which was granted.
Between now and game time, the team will do more rounds of grooming, they’ll spray the field with water to settle the in-fill and drag a cocoa mat that raises the turf fibers. All this will make the color of the in-lay graphics pop, and make the field safe and consistent. It’ll look beautiful by gametime.There are several rules every journalist knows, and I’m about to break a big one. You don’t wear gear repping the team you’re covering.
The nets are not difficult to operate. You simply pull down one wire on a pulley system until a carabiner is in position to clip into place. To lower the net, you unclip and just slowly, hand-over-hand, guide it back into position. Look at your partner across from you and try to go at the same speed. When the net is down, kick it close to the base of the wall so no one trips over it. A much easier learning curve than the scrubber.
Most of the game is easy. Just three hours with one of the best views in the house. Trevor and Sao have been paired up at this end zone for as long as they’ve been doing this, with Kyle and Dan on the other side. On a piece of paper hanging up in the office back in Eagan, they track which pair has had to raise more nets over the course of the season.
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