Hurricane Irma ripped through the state of Florida over the weekend, making it’s way through Jacksonville late Sunday evening into Monday morning, flooding parts of town near the coast, intracoastal area and the St. John’s River. In particular parts of downtown Jacksonville were flooded, including near EverBank Field.
Currently damage is being assessed at the stadium to see if the scheduled home opener against the Tennessee Titans is safe to take place, else it’s possible the game could be moved to Nashville and the season finale on Dec. 31 in Nashville could be flipped to Jacksonville.
"The only thing I know is that people will be checking on the stadium, people will be checking on the fields,” Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone told reporters on a conference call Monday. “They're going to get back to us sometime just to give us a report to where everything is at so we kind of get a little bit of a heads up or a feel of what we're coming back to when we come back to Jacksonville."
Rumor is that structurally EverBank Field is fine, but that the field suffered significant flooding. If the field is too saturated, it could be unsafe to play on for the NFL teams. If that is the case, the NFL will not allow a game to take place at EverBank, but the NFL has yet to make a decision according to Mark Long of the Associated Press.
"We're having a different conversation than we thought on Friday," NFL’s senior vice president of communications Joe Lockhart told Long on Monday. "Miami and Tampa Bay received less than expected, and Jacksonville probably received more. ... Looking at Jacksonville and Tampa, we don't have any definite word. We're still doing assessments. We hope to have something in next few days."
The NFL has since announced that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game will go on as scheduled this weekend, but the Jacksonville situation is still being assessed as of writing this.
Update via Mike DiRocco of ESPN:
Field looks like it's in great shape. EverBank Field grounds crew working on it now. The two giant video boards have a few dark spots but nothing official from the team yet regarding whether there is any significant damage.
Field looks like it's in great shape. EverBank Field grounds crew working on it now. The... https://t.co/TtQM29TdgY pic.twitter.com/vKGC0UJw8E
— Michael DiRocco (@ESPNdirocco) September 12, 2017