c/o People
Shockwaves were sent through the American football world when Aaron Rodgers went down with a left Achilles injury during Monday Night Football on Sept. 11, 2023. In a highly touted matchup between Rodgers’ new team, the New York Jets, and their division rival, the Buffalo Bills, the four-time league MVP dropped back to pass on the Jets’ fourth play from scrimmage. He was chased down by Bills edge rusher Leonard Floyd, but while attempting to evade the sack, he tore his left Achilles tendon, sidelining him for an extended period of time.
Rodgers signed with the Jets this past off-season, after spending the last 18 years with the Green Bay Packers. With this signing, he encouraged other players to join the Jets roster, bringing new hope and life to a team that has not reached the playoffs since 2010, the longest active drought in the NFL. With Rodgers’ leadership and the head coaching of Robert Saleh, along with an arsenal of young weapons like running back Breece Hall, wide receiver Garrett Wilson, and cornerback Sauce Gardner, many people predicted a return to the playoffs for the Jets, but that same hope turned into anguish as Rodgers was carted off the field that Monday night.
While this injury has large implications for the Jets organization and the league as a whole, it has also caused many players, fans, critics, and people involved with the NFL to revisit a hot topic in terms of player safety: synthetic turf fields vs. grass fields. Out of the 30 NFL stadiums in use right now, 14 have artificial turf fields, including the one Rodgers was playing on when he was injured. The other 16 stadiums have grass fields. In an age where ensuring the safety of players in a highly competitive and physically demanding sport is extremely important, every aspect of the game is being considered to ensure athletes can play at a high level without worrying too much about injury. However, turf fields do not promote this mentality, and players have taken notice and are speaking out about it.
President of the National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA) and former NFL Center JC Tretter explained why field conditions are so important to player safety in an essay published on the NFLPA’s official website in October 2020.
“Professional football players put extremely high levels of force and rotation onto the playing surface,” Tretter wrote. “Grass will eventually give, which often releases the cleat prior to reaching an injurious load. On synthetic surfaces, there is less give, meaning our feet, ankles, and knees absorb the force, which makes injury more likely to follow.”
All recent statistics back up this argument. Tretter details that, from 2012 to 2018, a football player playing on a turf field was 32% more likely to experience a non-contact knee injury and an astonishing 69% more likely to experience a non-contact foot or ankle injury. Studies from data company Sports Info Solutions show that, from 2017 to 2022, seven of the top ten fields with the most injuries per game were synthetic turf fields, whereas seven of the top ten fields with the least injuries per game were natural grass fields.
With all of this data available, it seems relatively obvious that most stadiums should have grass fields. So, why are nearly half of NFL stadiums sticking with synthetic turf? Randall Cobb, a Jets receiver who has spent 10 of his 13 NFL seasons catching passes from Rodgers, put it best when asked about his quarterback’s injury.
“We wanted the NFL to protect players with grass fields, but the NFL is more worried about making money,” he said. “Profit over people, it’s always been the case.”
While Cobb takes an aggressive stance against the NFL and their higher-ups, he is not entirely wrong. Although grass fields are safer, they are also more expensive to maintain. According to one turf field installment company, it takes between $42,800 to $205,200 to maintain a natural grass field, in comparison to the $23,250 to $127,000 it takes to maintain a synthetic turf field. It’s likely safe to assume that the cost of taking care of NFL fields is on the higher end of those numbers, and some teams and stadiums are not willing to spend the extra money to replace their cost-effective synthetic turf.
However, considering that every NFL franchise costs between $3.5 billion (Cincinnati Bengals) and $9 billion (Dallas Cowboys), this cost seems low enough to make the change, and the NFLPA is making sure team owners know it. Their executive director, Lloyd Howell, emphasized this point in a statement following Rodgers’ injury.
“While [the NFLPA and its players] know there is an investment to making this change, there is a bigger cost to everyone in our business if we keep losing our best players to unnecessary injuries,” he wrote.
Howell is correct. Aaron Rodgers, one of the most important players in football today, getting injured in this manner is detrimental to the league, considering how the NFL capitalized on the fiasco that surrounded Rodgers and his decision to join the Jets this off-season. By losing one of the game’s stars, there is less draw to a team like the Jets, and the league loses money. Not only have older players like Rodgers (who is 39 years old) been injured in non-contact plays on turf in recent years but also some of the games’ brightest stars. DK Metcalf, J.C. Jackson, Kyler Murray, and others have experienced similar injuries that now put them at a greater risk for re-injury for the rest of their career.
Dozens of NFL players have expressed their discontent with the NFL’s inability to enforce this change, and this conversation will only be heightened by an injury to a player of this magnitude and importance. When it’s all said and done, the fight for league-wide grass fields is a matter of making sure some of the world’s best athletes can remain healthy while performing at a high level. The NFLPA will keep fighting to see this change happen in stadiums across the country, but it is unclear whether the NFL will budge from where they stand at this moment.
“This is worth the investment,” Howell said. “It simply needs to change now.”
Max Forstein can be reached at mforstein@wesleyan.edu.