🏈 Why the NFL (Secretly) Can’t Ban Artificial Turf

Aaron Rodgers has had too much time on his hands recently if you ask me. And a lot that can be blamed on one culprit:

Artifical Turf.

Let’s take a deep dive into the debate about why players think it should be banned and why the NFL refuses to do anything about it.

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• 🗞 The Big Story

• ❌ The Problem with Turf

• 👨🏻‍⚖️ The NFL’s Defense

• 💼 The Owner's Case

• ⚽️ The FIFA Problem

• 💡 The Solution is... More Turf?

• 🔎 The Most Probable Outcome

🗞 The Big Story

Every year, we have the same conversation:

A high-profile player suffers a season-ending injury on an artificial turf field, which results in an immediate call from players to ban it in the NFL.

And then, a few days later, the NFL comes out with some statement talking about how they’re looking into it, and how player safety is their “#1 priority” or some nonsense like that.

And then… nothing happens.

But why? I mean, given all the injuries that have happened in the NFL this year, it seems obvious that artificial turf is less safe than natural grass.

And the NFL knows this, but they’re not actually the ones calling the shots.

You see, to fully understand this debate, you have to know there are three groups involved:

1. The players, who want artificial turf changed to grass

2. The NFL, that doesn’t want to admit it’s wrong

3. The owners, the group that actually holds all the power

And it’s that third group that players need to convince if they want anything changed.

But how do they convince them? And what would a solution to this Artificial Turf vs. Natural Grass debate look like?

❌ The Problem with Turf

Well first, we have to understand what makes turf so dangerous in the first place because on the surface it doesn’t seem like there should be much of a difference between playing on turf versus playing on natural grass.

And in order to fully understand the danger of artificial turf, we have to zoom into an individual blade of the fake grass.

Specifically, the kind of fake grass used by seven NFL teams before this season.

This is called slit-film turf, and it’s the specific kind of artificial turf that NFL Player’s Association president, JC Tretter, called for a ban on in April of 2023.

That’s because it’s designed to have a little opening, or slit, in every blade of grass which is meant to help increase its durability since that woven pattern is designed to eventually tear apart and get even more fluffy over time.

But it’s actually proven to be incredibly dangerous for NFL athletes to play on.

That’s because these quick-moving players are getting their cleats caught in those little slits as they run around, leading to more non-contact injuries than on any other type of playing surface.

And this claim is backed up by a pretty extensive study that both the NFL and the NFL Players Association funded which shows that more lower-body, non-contact injuries occurred on artificial playing surfaces than on natural grass between 2018 and 2022.

In fact, another study found that on artificial turf between 2012 and 2018 players had a:

• 32% higher chance of suffering a non-contact knee injury

• 69% higher chance of suffering a non-contact foot or ankle injury

So why doesn’t the story just stop here?

I mean, multiple studies funded by the NFL and its players show pretty clearly that playing games on artificial turf leads to more injuries than playing on real grass.

Well, the true answer to that question lies in the year 2021…

👨🏻‍⚖️ The NFL’s Defense

Now, like any good league, you’ll never get a straight answer from the NFL as to whether or not artificial turf is actually unsafe.

They respond with the same old tired answer about wanting to drive down injuries across all playing surfaces, not just artificial turf.

But let’s examine that claim for a second.

Now, credit to ManGamesLostNFL on Twitter for this, but he charted out all of the missed games due to injuries each team has had between 2009 and 2022, and he compared it to the number of wins that team had during the same time frame.

Now, you have teams like Washington and Jacksonville, who both play on natural grass, yet are among the most injured teams in the league.

So to a certain extent, the league is right, some grass fields are responsible for more injuries than some artificial turf fields.

But don’t let the outliers fool you, because when you look at the top five most injured teams, four of them use artificial turf and three of them, New Orleans, Indianapolis, and New York, used slit-film turf during this time frame.

However, the NFL will still use outliers to try and convince you that there is no difference between the two playing surfaces.

This is what they did in 2022, when that study they funded showed that in 2021 injury rates on artificial turf and natural grass were nearly identical for the first time in 11 years and they subsequently went on a PR campaign to say that artificial turf is just as safe as natural grass.

Even though the very next year, in 2022, the league saw the biggest gap in injury rates between the two surfaces in 8 years.

But for Roger Goodell and the NFL, they want to muddy the water, that way they don’t have to admit they’ve been on the wrong side of this debate the whole time.

But here’s the worst part, even if the NFL wanted to make the change to all-natural grass fields tomorrow, they couldn’t.

Because they’re not the ones in charge of that decision.

💼 The Owner’s Case

Every NFL stadium is owned by that team’s owner, the local government, or some combination of both.

But regardless of who owns the stadium, their only goal is to make the most amount of money from that stadium as possible.

Just think of the people who own these stadiums less as owners of professional sports teams and more as landlords who want to make sure their property is making them as much money as possible.

And sure it’s nice to own an NFL team but in the context of these stadiums, those teams are just a tenant who rents out the space 8-10 times per year.

And what about the other 355-odd days the stadium sits empty?

Well, obviously it doesn’t.

That’s because these landlords have gotten really good at filling their stadium's schedule with all sorts of events from concerts to monster truck shows.

And the one thing that allows them to jam-pack so many events into a week and still host an NFL game on a Sunday is artificial turf.

And there’s an argument to be made that the additional revenue stadiums make from non-football-related activities is actually a good thing for the football teams that play there.

Since the owners have more money can lead to stadium and facility upgrades that benefit the football team.

I mean, do you think that Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, would have been willing to invest $5 billion of his own money to build SoFi Stadium if he didn’t think he could also use it for college football, concerts, and more?

Probably not, but the Rams and the Chargers still benefit from those state-of-the-art facilities because of the promise of those other revenue streams outside of NFL football.

Not to mention, that for most stadiums it’s not just the owners that are making all the decisions on what the playing surface should be.

In fact, in most instances, local and state governments have invested hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into these stadiums and they want to see them used as places to host things like high school state championships, trade shows, and conventions.

So are these local governments and team owners just supposed to give up all of these other events because of an NFL team that only uses the field 10 times per year?

Well actually, yes. And the funny part is the people who own these stadiums are already willing to do it.

⚽️ The FIFA Problem

When FIFA announced it would be playing the World Cup in North America in 2026, nearly every NFL stadium threw its hat in the ring to host a match.

There was just one problem:

All international soccer competitions have to be played on natural grass because of the same safety concerns I outlined earlier but half of the stadiums in the NFL use artificial turf.

So what did the owners of these stadiums do?

They happily agreed to temporarily change their playing surfaces to be eligible to host a match and cash in on the World Cup coming to America.

Exposing the one thing NFL athletes have probably been thinking for years:

That their safety has a price.

Because as soon as a “good enough” opportunity comes along to change the playing surfaces of these NFL stadiums, the owners and local governments are more than willing to do it.

But when their own players ask for it, they mumble the same concerns they have for years:

Like “it’s not practical” or, my favorite “it’s too expensive.”

And that’s usually coming from a billionaire.

But let’s examine these arguments for a second, because if NFL stadiums are willing to switch to natural grass for the World Cup, why couldn’t they make that change permanent?

I mean, Front Office Sports estimates that it would cost just $12 million to make the change permanent across the league - even in indoor or cold-weather stadiums.

In fact, Fox 9 in Minneapolis estimates that it would only cost US Bank Stadium, an enclosed, domed stadium, an extra $4-$5 million per year to maintain natural grass indoors.

And we already have plenty of examples of cold weather cities with great grass fields, like Green Bay and Denver, which are both consistently ranked by players as top 10 playing surfaces in the league.

But then there’s the pushback that you couldn’t host multiple games a weekend, or concerts during the season on grass fields because then they won’t be ready for Sundays.

💡 The Solution is… More Turf?

So maybe real grass isn’t the most practical answer for every team across the league.

Fortunately, there is one solution that could be the perfect compromise for everyone involved:

It’s been found to have no major difference in lower-body injuries from natural grass, and most new stadiums are already planning on using this surface instead of slit-film turf next year.

And since it’s still considered artificial turf, the NFL doesn’t have to admit that they’ve been on the wrong side of this whole debate for years.

It’s called mono-filament turf, and notably injury-prone fields like MetLife Stadium and Lucas Oil Field - which both used slit-film turf last year, are making the change to this new material.

Now, it’s great for a couple of reasons:

1. It only costs about $1.2 million to install

2. It doesn’t have those little loops that player’s cleats can get caught on, reducing the injury rate

Now, that also means it stands up straighter and acts more like long, uncut grass which results in a slower playing surface overall, but at the same time in November of 2022, the NFLPA said that at the very least it was demanding teams change from slit-film to monofilament turf to decrease the chance of injury.

And that seems like a change most places are willing to make, since after this year only one team, the Bengals, will be utilizing slit-film turf.

But even though this is a compromise it’s still not giving the players what they want.

So what are the odds that the change players really want ever gets made? Where every team plays on a real grass surface.

🔎 The Most Probable Outcome

I think former NFL Executive, Andrew Brandt, sums up this whole debate best:

And he’s right.

There is a clear price owners and local governments are willing to pay to have safer fields for their players, and at this point, the cost of losing players isn't higher than the cost of losing concerts, college football games, and soccer matches.

We also know that the NFL isn’t rushing to make the switch mandatory, because if they did then they’d be admitting that for the last 50 years, they’ve been knowingly putting their players at an increased risk of injury.

Something that didn’t turn out so well for them last time.

But eventually, I think there will be a tipping point - where athletes are making so much money and teams are losing so many good players to injury that owners will have no choice but to protect their most expensive assets.

However, until then it seems like monofilament turf is as good as these players are going to get.

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