All Americans are familiar with the sport of football. Many families get together, wear their favorite teams’ jerseys, and cheer on their favorite players every weekend during NFL season. During games, we see our favorite players get knocked down over and over again, and unfortunately, sometimes they can’t get back up.
It comes as no surprise that football is a very dangerous sport. In the 2022 season, there were a total of 149 concussions over the span of 271 games. This was an 18% increase from 2021, and “14% higher than the three-year average (130) between 2018 and 2020.”
The NFLPA (National Football League Players Association) is responsible for making sure that all the players are safe, and steps are taken to prevent injuries.
Aaron Rodgers, the current Jets quarterback, got injured in the first game of the season. He played for a total of four plays, or 75 seconds, before rupturing his Achilles trying to spin away from Bills defender Leonard Floyd. This sparked lots of discussion on whether new artificial turf or real grass is safer for players.
Some think that the injury was due to the turf, while others think it was just a freak accident.
Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner, spoke out about this issue, saying, “We want to go on what’s the best from an injury standpoint to prevent the injuries, to give our players the best possible surface to play on.”
This all comes down to science. However, there are mixed statistics. The NFLPA released data supporting the theory that the number of non-contact injuries increased on artificial turf. On the other end of things, ESPN reviewed internal league data and found that overall, the recent rate of injuries was relatively the same.
There are many players who prefer real grass over artificial turf and think it’s much safer as well. One of these players, David Bakhtiari, offensive tackler for the Green Bay Packers, spoke out about his opinion on field turf shortly after Rodgers was injured. He showed his anger in a social media post explaining how he does not see how it is so easy “to remove all artificial turf for the World Cup coming up,” but they are unable to do the same for NFL players. Another player, Darius Slay, expressed how he thinks that the MetLife stadium needs “to get real grass. That’s trash.”
There are many pros and cons for both real grass and artificial turf. However, it all comes down to which is the safest, as well as what most of the players prefer. For now, only 15 out of 30 NFL stadiums have artificial turf. At the end of the day, only the NFL knows what they are going to do next about this new debate.
