Aaron Rodgers Injury
After some devastating injuries in week one of the NFL season, including a season-ending Achilles injury to Aaron Rodgers, fans are now demanding that the NFL switch from turf fields to grass, in light of limiting these types of injuries from happening. It is proven that grass fields are a significantly safer surface to play on than artificial turf, which should be of utmost importance to the league.
Steps in the Right Direction?
NFLPA president JC Tretter has continuously been asking the NFL to take these steps of replacing the fields with real grass to decrease unnecessary injuries. Now MetLife, in specific, has removed what they call slit film turf, which is the surface that has caused most of the injuries. However, instead of switching to grass, they decided to put in monofilament turf, which is a safer option but is still not the safest surface to play on.
Tretter was not very happy about this, and he called out the league in a previous claim, stating, “Instead of following the long-term data (which is the clear issue), listening to players and making the game safer. The NFL used an outlier year (2021) to engage in a PR campaign to convince everyone that the problem doesn’t actually exist. In short, last year, the gap – much like the NFL’s credibility with players on this issue- was as wide as it has ever been, proving that 2021 was, in fact, an outlier.”
Evidence of Turf Injuring Players
Data has proved that injury rates on natural grass were lower over an eight-year period from the years 2012-2020. However, in 2021, the injury rates for artificial turf and natural grass were very similar, which Tretter labeled as an “outlier.” With players and fans alike, most agree with Tretter’s outlook on the issue at hand.
Recently, Jets’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers was injured with a torn Achilles, which he landed kind of awkwardly on an artificial surface. His former teammate in Green Bay, offensive tackle David Bakhtiari, weighed in on his opinions about turf, going on a massive Twitter rant on how the NFL needs to fix this issue as soon as possible.
https://t.co/IcYMu16gSo pic.twitter.com/5PnNjzog7o
— David Bakhtiari (@DavidBakhtiari) September 12, 2023
And that was the best that field has ever been since I’ve been playing there in ‘13. Bravo @ChicagoBears 👏🏼 https://t.co/BXx2z1sdEV
— David Bakhtiari (@DavidBakhtiari) September 12, 2023
It is clear that the NFL has a problem on its hands, much bigger than the mainstream media depicts it to be. If these significant injuries continue to plague the players, especially on artificial turf, the NFL will be under much more fire for this dilemma than ever before.
