Attention last week in the NFL focused on concussion protocols in the wake of the Tua Tagovailoa concussion situation, but the league also doubled down on a charged player health and safety position: that there is a negligible difference in lower extremity injuries on artificial turf versus grass fields.
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The issue emerged again because of Giants wide receiver Sterling Shepard’s non-contact injury on the MetLife turf in last week’s Monday Night Football game when he tore his left anterior cruciate ligament in a non-contact situation and ended his season. This followed Odell Beckham Jr. suffering the same injury during the Super Bowl played at SoFi Stadium, which also deploys artificial turf.
The question is whether cleats are more prone to catch on artificial turf than on natural grass, which gives more.
“Big picture, the lower extremity injury rates between natural grass and synthetic surfaces over the past few years has decreased to the point where it’s almost nonexistent right now,” said Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public affairs & policy; health & safety initiatives. “So, as a general matter, looking simply at a synthetic surface or a natural grass surface, it doesn’t really yield us a whole lot.”
Asked for the data behind the claim, the league declined to provide it.
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The assertion runs counter to some published medical literature. A 2018 article in the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine contends the rates of lower extremity injuries are higher on synthetic turf among NFL players.
A 2019 study published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine points out, “playing on artificial turf increases the risk of lower-body injury” and that “field surface has a causal effect on injury rates due to synthetic turf’s lack of ability to release an athlete’s shoe.”
Dr. Tim Kremchek, an orthopedic surgeon for the Cincinnati Reds for 26 years, called Miller’s comment an “irresponsible statement.”
“Unless you can absolutely significantly prove it and challenge the other studies to dispute this,” Kremchek said. “If you go and you look at the data, the data is all significantly skewed toward using natural grass turf.”
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The NFL’s chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills, told reporters in March that the issue of assigning turf blame to lower leg injuries is a complicated question because it involved issues ranging from cleats, weather, different types of artificial and grass fields, to even the time of the season.
“The answer is not going to be in one versus the other,” he said. “It’s going to be the performance characteristics and obviously, those can be changed. Grass can be changed in certain ways to make it safer, as can artificial surfaces. As we gather more data, I think we can better help people understand what’s the right surface for the right condition, you know, for the right use case, and I don’t think it’ll be just as simple as this one’s good, this one’s bad.”
Despite the NFL’s conviction that there is at most a negligible injury difference between grass and artificial turf, players routinely voice the opinion that grass is better.
Matt Schaub, a former player who plans to run next March in the scheduled election for the next executive director of the NFLPA, texted, “there is no question that grass fields are preferable … players should have a say over the surface we play on.”
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In 2020, NFLPA president JC Tretter posted a letter on the NFLPA website calling for all grass fields, writing, “A bit of physics: Professional football players put extremely high levels of force and rotation onto the playing surface. 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.”
The NFLPA did not reply for comment.
Asked about Tretter’s column and the NFL’s position, a league spokesperson wrote in an email the data had changed since the union president wrote his article.
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Brad Sohn, a lawyer who has represented NFL players, questions why given the league’s checkered history with concussion data, the NFL is not making all the field data available.
“Given that the NFL’s position flies in the face of everything I’ve seen on the subject and also seems to conveniently support what’s in its financial best interest, I need the full picture before I can take the NFL’s position seriously,” Sohn wrote in a text.
It’s no secret why teams would prefer artificial turf: It is far cheaper to maintain than the horticulture necessary with a grass field. Nevertheless, half the teams in the NFL play on grass, versus the other half on some type of artificial replacement.
One of the most common, FieldTurf, made from silica sand and rubber, is used by 11 NFL teams, according to the company. FieldTurf is what MetLife Stadium, home to the Giants and Jets, uses.
“We are at the forefront of innovation when it comes to limiting injuries and independent, peer-reviewed studies validate the safety of our fields,” a spokesman wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, injuries can happen and do so on a variety of surfaces, including natural grass. The FieldTurf surface at MetLife stadium was tested and passed the stringent NFL-mandated practices prior to the game day in question. As is our usual protocol, we continue to be in constant communication with the NFL and their experts to understand injuries that occur on our surface and gather information to ensure that our products remain the safest on the market.”
There have been great advances in artificial turf since the days of AstroTurf, which was a thin fake grass put over the concrete stadium floor (the name comes from its first use in sports in 1966 at the Houston Astrodome). Newer, more advanced turf generations and competitors like FieldTurf have emerged, though professional athletes still, by and large, argue for grass.
Dr. Kremchek notes it’s not just the stadium surface that is at issue, but the practice facilities too, and he wonders what effects there are for players who train on grass, playing away games on artificial turf.
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The NFL has presumably studied such patterns, and for many years has been tracking players’ cleats with radio-frequency identification tags to collect data on if there is a connection to the footwear model type and certain injuries. The league even deploys a machine, called the BEAST (Biomechanical Elite Athlete Shoe Turf Tester), that digs into the turf to gauge its receptivity to cleats.
What the NFL does influences colleges and lower-level football, and if the message is artificial turf fields are fine, that is troubling, argued Dr. Kremchek.
“That’s why it’s irresponsible,” he said. “So if you’ve got schools and high schools and colleges, and these kids have significant injuries and significant problems, just as studies of artificial turf have shown, yet they’re going to hang their hat and say, ‘OK, well, the NFL said it’s fine.'”
(Top photo of Odell Beckham Jr. after injuring his knee in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)