Jack Del Rio glad to have Raiders on full grass home field Sunday, calls playing on dirt ‘embarrassing’

The NFL schedule was carefully crafted this year to try to ensure the Raiders played on a dirt field to fewest games possible. They were away for the season opener, had to play at home after that and were on the road the past two weeks. They did the same thing last season.

That schedule allowed for the A’s season to complete, should they not make the playoffs, which they didn’t. Their final game at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum was September 27, allowing the stadium crews to removed the baseball diamond and lay sod down and allow it to take hold before the Raiders would play on it.

“It’s the way it should be,” Raiders Head coach Jack Del Rio said of the grass field. “It should be grass all the time. Hopefully they’ll get that rectified going forward because frankly it’s a little embarrassing playing on the cinder block. We tolerate it when we have to, but we’re definitely looking forward to having a full field of grass.”

There’s really no way for this to be rectified so long as the Raiders and A’s share a stadium and that won’t change anytime soon.

Both teams will eventually be getting new stadiums, but neither will happen for a few years yet. The Raiders of course hope to be in Las Vegas by 2020 and the A’s have a new stadium planned near downtown Oakland.

The best the league can do is just what they did the past couple years and have them on the road three of the first four games and hope the A’s don’t make the playoffs (sorry A’s fans) so we only see the Raiders playing on a baseball diamond once.