The World Cup adds to NFL turf debate as Cowboys, Rams change to grass
Debate between NFL teams using grass and turf will continue on over the next few years. Players have largely advocated for grass to be implemented into stadiums, citing knee injuries as a huge reason. Even so, teams have continued to use turf during football season.
However, grass might be rolled in for a different sporting event in the near future. With the FIFA World Cup coming to North America in the summer of 2026, NFL stadiums across the country are set to host games. No exact schedule has been released but host cities and stadiums have officially been announced.
Two of those are the Dallas Cowboys (AT&T Stadium) and Los Angeles Rams (SoFi Stadium), who currently use artificial turf for football but when soccer is in town, will use grass. According to an article posted by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, players have wondered why owners will compensate for soccer but not their own league.
“As one source within the NFL bubble who believes in grass fields recently told PFT, the NFL will warp and twist statistics in order to preserve the status quo,” Florio said. “The league doesn’t want to force owners to incur the expense of installing and maintaining grass — especially in venues where a significant re-engineering of the building would be necessary to permit it.”
The most recent version of NFL data was revealed in early November, showing ACL injuries are just as likely on grass as they are on turf. Players have strongly disagreed though, with the career-altering injuries seemingly happening in turf-filled stadiums more times than not.
Florio went on to say the NFL is not going to acknowledge there is a problem with the turf. Meaning, nothing about it is going to be fixed. If there ever is any admission, football players may have to wait over three years until soccer takes over for a summer in the US.
“Put simply, it’s a problem the NFL won’t solve because the NFL refuses to acknowledge that there’s even a problem,” Florio said. “The willingness of some owners to swap out turf-only fields for the World Cup will hopefully get so many people to recognize the problem that the league will have no choice but to finally concede that a problem exists.”
Grass is not perfect either and NFL stadiums have had problems in the past. During a 2015 Argentina-Mexico game at AT&T Stadium, Lionel Messi nearly suffered a serious injury which forced him to miss part of a game with FC Barcelona at a later date.
But injuries are likely going to happen no matter what. Players just realize there can be better prevention by making the full switch to grass.