Rodgers Has ‘No Confidence’ League Will Ban Dangerous Fields

Said Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers on slit-film artificial surfaces: “This, to me, is player safety. This would be putting your money where your mouth is if player safety is important.”

Author:
Bill Huber
Updated:
Nov 15, 2022 4:09 PM EST
Original:
Nov 15, 2022

In this story:

Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – A number of NFL players, including Green Bay Packers left tackle David Bakhtiari, took to Twitter on Saturday to urge the league to ban slit-film artificial playing surfaces, such as the ones used by the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions.

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, even while noting the NFL is awash in money, had absolutely no confidence the league will do anything about it.

“No, honestly,” Rodgers said on Tuesday. “I don’t have a lot of confidence when it comes to the league making that decision without some sort of big vote and gripes from certain owners who don’t want to spend the money. There were many things from the last [CBA] negotiations that the PA decided to pay for out of our own pocket because the ownership just didn’t want to fund some of those things.

“This, to me, is player safety. We, and when I say ‘we’ I mean the people who negotiated without the players, agreed to 17 games, which wasn’t about player safety. It was about monetary gains. So, this would be putting your money where your mouth is if player safety is important.”

Seven teams play on slit-film turf: the New York Giants and New York Jets, who share a stadium, along with the New Orleans Saints, Indianapolis Colts, Cincinnati Bengals and Green Bay’s NFC North rivals in Detroit and Minnesota. The Packers also played a game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, which has slit-film surface.

“The NFL and its experts have agreed with this data and acknowledge that the slit film field is less safe,” NFLPA President J.C. Tretter, a former Packers lineman, wrote over the weekend. “Player leadership wrote a letter to the NFL this week demanding the immediate removal of these fields and a ban on them going forward, both in stadiums and for practice fields. The NFL has not only refused to mandate this change immediately, but they have also refused to commit to mandating a change away from slit film in the future at all.”

Packers outside linebacker Rashan Gary suffered torn ACL at Detroit a couple weeks ago. The feeling is his injury, a noncontact injury in which he tried to change direction, was tied to the Ford Field surface.

“As much as I’ve enjoyed playing indoors over the years on turf, I do think it’s time to go all grass throughout the league,” Rodgers said. “I think you would see less of these noncontact injuries that we see on some of the surfaces. I think that it’d be a good step in the right direction towards player safety to make the requirement for every field to be grass.”

Pro Football Talk obtained research from Biocore, a company that provides engineering analysis for the league and union. According to the research, slit-film fields yield a “statistically significant higher risk” than the league average. Precisely, its models suggest two to three additional noncontact injuries per field per year.

Rodgers wouldn’t say which fields are the worst.

“I think a lot of it’s the softness of it,” he said. “Some of these fields are a little bit softer than others and what that does is it creates more wobble I believe when the foot strikes the ground, and it’s that wobble that can cause some of these non-contact knee injuries that we’ve seen. I’m not sure if that’s the standard that’s set for that type of surface or it’s the installation of that surface, but a lot of that could be just done away with if we had grass in every stadium.”

Lambeau Field is a mostly all-grass surface. In 2018, the team went to Kentucky bluegrass with SISGrass polyethylene fibers stitched into the surface for additional durability. According to the SIS Pitches site, SIS Grass is 95 percent natural.

According to SIS: “The installation of the pitch was quick and effective, completed by one machine using laser guidance to inject the fibers into the pitch. With this advanced technology the project was finished in seven days, which is four times faster than the previous hybrid pitch installations at the stadium.”

If Lambeau Field can have a grass surface, just about every team should be able to have a grass surface. And if not, there are safer artificial surfaces available.

There is no excuse, Rodgers said. The Packers, for instance, posted a record profit of $77.7 million last fiscal-year. The 32 teams shared $11.1 billion in revenue.

The NFL “is making a lot of money. It’s about cost,” he said. “I don’t know how much that would cost. I’m sure a few million, but the league’s been doing pretty well. We’re still the highest rated sporting league. Sunday Night Football has great ratings. Monday Night Football is probably back with Joe (Buck) and Troy (Aikman) getting good ratings. Thursday night does great. All primetime’s doing pretty well. That probably could happen pretty quick.”