🌱 Why Can’t MetLife Stadium Switch to Grass?

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I just got back from a 1-day TikTok Sports Creator Summit in Atlanta, and I have a few thoughts:

There has never been a better time to build a business with short-form content. As recently as January of this year, most creators would have been lucky to earn a few thousand dollars a month directly from a platform.

Today?

Creators can consistently earn six-figures a year directly from TikTok; that’s insane.

However, after an 11-hour day of full-contact networking with other sports creators and the TikTok team (which I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of), I’m going to need a weekend to recharge. Is there such a thing as learning too much?

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The (Insane) Story Behind the NFL’s Most High-Tech Shoulder Pads

📉 Biggest Loser: Why Can’t MetLife Stadium Switch to Grass?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How One Ball Just Changed NFL Kicking Forever

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🗞 The Big Story

This is the most high-tech pair of shoulder pads ever created, but not for the reason you might think.

Background: In 1980, the San Francisco 49ers were riding a 2-0 start heading into a Week 3 game against the New York Jets when the team’s starting quarterback, Steve DeBerg, entered the training room with a strange injury:

He couldn’t talk.

That’s because the week prior, DeBerg had suffered a bruised nerve around his larynx during an overtime win against the St. Louis Cardinals, resulting in him barely being able to whisper.

But, not yet ready to trust his second-year back-up quarterback with the starting job, head coach Bill Walsh instructed the trainer to figure out a way for DeBerg to communicate with the rest of the offense in front of 50,000 Jets fans, and what they created might go down as one of the wildest sports inventions of all time.

3x As Loud as a Car Stereo: That’s because trainer, Hal Wyatt, decided that he was going to strap a literal speaker to the back of DeBerg’s shoulder pads, which one report at the time described as “three times as powerful as a car stereo.”

This speaker was then hooked up to a microphone, which sat directly in front of DeBurg’s mouth and was controlled by a simple on-off switch inside his helmet. That way, all the quarterback had to do at the line of scrimmage was whisper his audibles and cadence, and it would be blasted out over the crowd noise.

Now, you might think that a bulky device like this would have a negative impact on a quarterback’s performance, and you’d be right; it just didn’t come in the way you might expect.

Benched: DeBerg actually led the 49ers to a 3-0 start after throwing for 181 yards and 2 TDs in his first game wearing the speaker pads; however, numerous microphone malfunctions caused him to have to sit out for a few plays, which conveniently gave Bill Walsh the chance to put in his young backup quarterback for some meaningful playing time.

In fact, over the next 6 weeks, DeBerg continued to wear the speaker, which would frequently malfunction, giving back-up quarterback Joe Montana several more opportunities to take 1st-team reps, but after a three game losing streak, capped off by a 5 interception game from DeBerg, he was officially benched in favor of the future Hall of Famer and traded to Denver the following season, paving the way for the 49ers to win their first of four Super Bowls with Montana that same year.

They gotta get this thing in the Hall of Fame.

📉 Biggest Loser

What the hell is wrong with MetLife’s turf? Since 2020, it’s been responsible for some of the most notable injuries in the NFL.

But what if I told you that things were only going to get worse before they got better?

Background: At this point, there’s no arguing that artificial turf fields are more dangerous than natural grass. Not only have players been saying this for years, but studies have consistently found that grass is ‘significantly safer’ than turf.

So why hasn’t the league done anything about it?

According to NFL executives, “there are no simple answers” to the turf vs. grass debate, but that’s just code for a much deeper problem that nobody seems to be talking about.

Economic Argument: On the surface, it might seem like you could just make an economic argument to switch artificial turf at stadiums like MetLife Stadium over to natural grass. After all, the cost of losing this many players far outweighs the estimated $400,000 to install a natural grass playing surface.

And it’s not like stadiums haven’t made the switch before, even if just temporarily, for events like the Copa America or the recent 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. In fact, MetLife Stadium in particular is in one of the best situations to make this change, since it’s one of just two NFL stadiums that’s 100% privately funded, meaning the Jets and the Giants wouldn’t need any special permission to make the switch.

So why are they so opposed?

Well, just like everything in the NFL, it comes down to money, but not in the way you might think.

Non-NFL Revenue: It is true that MetLife makes tens of millions of dollars every year in “non-NFL revenue” by hosting events ranging from concerts to high school football games. In fact, according to Sportico, venues like SoFi, AT&T, and MetLife each reportedly make around $50 million per year in additional revenue that they’re not required to split with players.

But that’s only part of the problem.

Because in my opinion, the much larger issue (and the root cause of this whole turf vs. grass debate) can be traced back to when stadiums were first built.

Increasingly, NFL stadiums are becoming increasingly expensive to build. Even MetLife, which was built over 15 years ago, costs over $2 billion in today’s money, making it the third most expensive stadium in the entire league.

Squeezing Out Every Dime: In order to justify that cost, either to investors or taxpayers, NFL owners have to try and get as much revenue out of a stadium as possible, which is why 7 of the 10 most expensive stadiums use artificial turf, so they can more easily squeeze in multiple events per week, 52 weeks a year.

And until the NFL mandates that every game be played on natural grass, my guess is that owners will continue to trade season-ending injuries for better profit margins year-round.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The NFL just made a massive change to its footballs, but not in the way you might think.

Kickers’ Balls: 25 years ago, the NFL was the wild west when it came to kickers. You had barefoot kickers, kickers with no toes, and kickers that barely wore helmets, but quite possibly the biggest difference between kickers back then and kickers today is their balls.

Before 1999, kickers and punters were essentially allowed to bring their own footballs to games, which led to some not-so-legal doctoring in order to get their balls to fly further.

For example, kicker Michael Husted recalls inflating his balls to over twice the normal pressure to stretch them out before placing them in the sauna for two days to soften the leather. Meanwhile, other kickers have bragged about soaking their balls in evaporated milk, lemon juice, or even microwaving them before games just to make them easier to kick.

Rule Change: However, by 1999, the NFL had had enough of kickers using these doctored balls, so they instituted a rule that required six brand-new, sealed footballs to be shipped directly to the referee’s locker room and opened just 90 minutes before every game, at which point each equipment staff would have to rush to prep all six balls before kick-off.

This new time restriction forced equipment staff to focus their attention on just a few footballs per game, which often led to the last few footballs receiving little to no attention, resulting in a feeling one kicker described as “kicking a cannonball.”

That’s why, over 25 years after this rule change, seven NFL teams proposed an update this offseason to alleviate the stress on their equipment staff before games; however, this new rule might have just changed the landscape of the NFL forever.

More Time to Prepare: Instead of getting just an hour and a half to break in these so-called “K-Balls”, teams can now prepare their balls before arriving at the stadium. And even though they’re still limited on the tools they can use, this extra time gives equipment staff the chance to really break in the leather and smooth out the seams, which has allowed kickers to boot the ball further than ever before this season.

We’re already on pace to see the most makes and attempts from 56 yards plus through the first few weeks of the season, and after seeing Cam Little’s 70-yard bomb in the preseason, it’s probably only a matter of time before several new field-goal records are set, which has completely shifted some teams’ offensive strategies.

I just wonder how long it’ll be before the NFL changes the rules again because the kickers have gotten too good?

⏱️ In Other News

• Caitlin Clark weighs in on the WNBA drama

• Yes, there will be a top Banana this year

• Meet the MLS Team with a Full Content Studio

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

In lieu of something witty, here’s a YouTube channel I’ve been enjoying recently.

See you next Wednesday.