NFL Players Association president says plastic was not placed on UNLV fields where 49ers practice

HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) - JC Tretter, president of the NFL Players Association, said Wednesday that plastic was supposed to be placed on top of UNLV’s practice fields but was never installed.

The NFL placed natural grass on top of the Rebels’ field turf, and San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan complained it was too soft.

The 49ers are practicing at UNLV this week for Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs. Kansas City is working out at the Las Vegas Raiders’ facility.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a news conference Monday that the playing surface at UNLV met the necessary standards and the union signed off on it as did 23 experts.

“It’s softer than what they practiced on, but that happens,” Goodell said. “It’s well within all of our testing standards. It’s something we think all of our experts, as well as neutral field inspectors, have all said unanimously that it’s a playable field.”

49ers players raved about the other facilities at UNLV.

“I’m shocked because they’re in the Mountain West,” said safety Tashaun Gipson, who played in that conference at Wyoming. “I’m shocked the locker room is that nice. We’ve got to do better at Wyoming. The fields are the fields, but the weight room and everything is pretty decent.”

Cornerback Deommodore Lenoir played at Oregon, known for having excellent facilities.

“UNLV, I love their locker room,” Lenoir said. “It reminds me of Oregon’s. The whole setup was exactly how ours was. The facilities are just like Oregon’s, too.”

PEELING BACK THE CURTAIN

Chiefs president Mark Donovan gave a few local reporters Wednesday the first glimpse behind the scenes of what it took to host pop superstar Taylor Swift at games this season, beginning with the “week of” warning he got from tight end Travis Kelce.

“Very first conversation I had with Travis,” Donovan recalled, “I told him, ‘The one thing you can count on from us is we’re going to be very respectful. We’re going to respect your relationship first and foremost. As much as this is an amazing opportunity, we are not going to do that stuff. I think it’s important for you to appreciate what this is.’”

That meant the Chiefs never played a Taylor Swift song in Arrowhead Stadium all season. Never showed her on the video boards unless they were showing all the celebrities in attendance. They certainly didn’t ask her to sing the national anthem.

“The first time we had her was, as you can imagine, full of meetings with security, police, how we’re getting her in, what we are going to hide, what we are not going to hide,” Donovan said. “How do you move a superstar like that, and do it safely? Then we did it, and typical Travis, we had this great protocol for leaving, exactly how we were going to do it, and he grabs her in a convertible and takes off. I texted him later, ‘That exit was epic.’”

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

Kyle Shanahan has been around the NFL for almost as long as he can remember. He was just 4 when his father, Mike, got his first job in the NFL as an assistant in Denver, and the younger Shanahan followed along after that, frequently attending practices and games as his dad worked for the Broncos, Raiders and 49ers.

Kyle Shanahan takes pride in being the last person to hold the wires for a head coach in the Super Bowl in the 1997 season with the NFL going to wireless headsets the following season.

But it was all the lessons he learned watching his dad coach that help him most today.

“You don’t realize how much it helps you until you get in it,” Kyle Shanahan said. “You just realize that a lot of the stuff you’ve been around and it makes it a little easier. Not only was I a son of a coach, but my dad’s the best coach I’ve ever been around. To be around that good of one, I think also was a huge advantage for me.”

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AP Pro Football Writer Rob Maaddi, AP Sports Writers Mark Anderson and Dave Skretta contributed.