In Buffalo and elsewhere, NFL players find grass to be the better choice over artificial turf

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — For Josh Allen, the grass is most definitely greener across the street.

As the Buffalo Bills moved closer to their first regular-season game Thursday in their new Highmark Stadium, the quarterback looked forward to not having to deal with the added wear and tear his body previously experienced playing on the artificial turf of the team’s now-demolished old facility.

“I’ve gotten numerous, numerous burns on my legs from artificial turf, to the point I can’t sleep at night because it’s bubbling over. It’s very painful,” Allen said, noting he still feels it after the Bills practice on the turf inside their fieldhouse. “If I could snap my fingers and make every field grass, that’s what I would do for sure.”

The new Bills stadium and Allen’s comments reflect an increasingly heated debate in the league over whether teams should play on artificial turf or natural grass. It follows a World Cup in which tournament organizers mandated converting seven NFL stadiums from turf to grass, only to switch back to artificial surfaces for the pro football season.

Players overwhelmingly support grass
NFL players and their union overwhelmingly favor natural grass and are perplexed about why the league’s billionaire owners can’t do what FIFA did for the World Cup.

“It’s a little bizarre, but what can you expect?” 49ers defensive lineman Nick Bosa said.

As with most debates, it’s about money. Though the NFL does not provide cost figures, it’s widely accepted that artificial turf is much more affordable than grass, which requires year-round maintenance and constant resodding. NFL grass fields generally have a lifespan of about seven events.

Artificial fields also require some maintenance to replace infill, and generally have a lifespan of between three to seven years.

That still doesn’t square with players, even as the NFL continues trending toward artificial surfaces.

“Natural grass isn’t out of reach. Prioritizing players shouldn’t be either!” Colts running back Jonathan Taylor posted on his X account with the hashtag “WorthTheCost.”

With Buffalo, 16 of the NFL’s 30 facilities will feature grass this season, including Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, which is made up of 95% grass and reinforced with polyethylene fibers.

Of the 18 NFL facilities built since 2000, 11 have artificial surfaces, and those don’t include Carolina and Tennessee, which recently made the switch to turf. Cost and maintenance appear to play more of a factor than geography, with six of the NFL’s seven coldest markets and all three Florida-based teams featuring grass surfaces.

Where there is consensus is that NFL playing surfaces are far more advanced today than 50 years ago when several teams, starting with the Houston Oilers, played on AstroTurf — essentially a thinly padded carpet laid over concrete or asphalt.

NFL/NFLPA set standards for all fields
Nick Pappas, the NFL’s director of field surfaces, said the advancements in turf technology are night and day since the AstroTurf era. The focus now, he said, is the NFL and NFLPA working with all turf manufacturers to establish standards for surfaces based on player feedback and metrics from testing conducted by the league.

This led to the league and union jointly releasing a series of standardized playing surface requirements each facility must meet by 2028. The list of criteria covering both playing and practice surfaces includes minimum standards for impact, traction, and guidelines for when to resurface.

The objective is to achieve as much consistency as possible across all 30 NFL playing surfaces, whether grass or artificial.

“The goal is that we take the emotions out of the material makeup,” Pappas said. “What the composition of the field is should only be secondary to how the field performs.”

In the past, Pappas said, the guidelines for field composition were easy to comply with, leading to teams choosing their turf by cutting the best deal with a manufacturer. Now, the league and union are having manufacturers present their products for testing before being certified.

“That’s really the course correction,” Pappas said. “It’s, bring us a product once you believe you’ve met (the criteria). And then we’ll run it through the wringer and get it in front of our athlete and ensure that we feel comfortable putting it into play.”

The NFL cites its own studies in saying there has been no significant difference in injury rates when comparing artificial turf and grass over the past three seasons. And last season’s lower-extremity injury rate was half of the average level that occurred from 2018-22.

And yet players, and even some NFL owners, prefer grass.

That was the case in Las Vegas, where Raiders managing general partner Mark Davis cited player safety as one reason to install grass despite moving into an indoor facility.

The same applied in Buffalo, where owner Terry Pegula considered installing natural grass in the team’s old facility before electing to wait until the new one was built.

Already resodding in Buffalo
The Bills have encountered a few hiccups in making the switch, and that’s despite installing heating coils, grow lights and ventilation systems to spur growth. The team recently elected to resod its entire field ahead of schedule after divots and worn areas became exposed after just two preseason games and two practices.

The Bills elected to resod after their final preseason game to take advantage of a three-plus-week window before their home opener. And they’re expected to resod the field at last once more before the season is over.

Pappas called it a trial and error process, because there’s a learning curve involved to determine how grass reacts to a new environment.

“Obviously, we were seeing a grass that maybe didn’t have the strength that everybody had hoped for and was pulling apart a little more than expected or preferred,” said Pappas, who personally inspected the Bills’ field before and after the team’s preseason finale last month. “They’ll continue to adapt and make adjustments as they need to. … And I do anticipate things will continue to improve.”

The NFLPA, meantime, applauded the Bills for installing grass in the first place, and sticking with it despite the additional costs involved.

Cost isn’t an issue as far as Bills President Pete Guelli is concerned.

“I understand the economics of why people want an artificial turf field,” Guelli told The Associated Press. “But if you’re really putting your players first, there’s no other choice but grass.”