Julian Edelman slams NFL for using turf fields

One topic of contentious debate the past few seasons has been grass vs. turf in the National Football League. But it’s not much of a debate for the majority of the players across the league. The players strongly prefer grass to turf. It’s nearly unanimous. One of the greatest receivers in NFL history, former Patriot Julian Edelman, recently blasted the NFL for continuing to use turf fields in an article written by ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio.

Julian Edelman sounded off recently on Gilbert Arenas’ podcast

“I tore my ACL on a sh***y turf in Detroit which was absolutely ridiculous,” Edelman said in an appearance on No Chill with Gilbert Arenas on Fubo Sports.. “I broke my foot on a sh***y turf field in New York. This is a multi-billion-dollar corporation and we can’t get grass?”

He then explained the differences between the two surfaces.

“With turf there is nowhere for the energy to disperse,” Edelman said. “So, when you cut, everything is going straight into your knee and ankle. When you’re a younger player its awesome because you can cheat a cut. You can cut off your inside foot and still make the cut, whereas on grass you’ll slip. But there is no give. When you get to about 27 or 28, you go out and you have to practice on a turf field and your back locks up, your knees get hurt for the next three days, your ankles are sore for three days. There’s just nowhere for the energy to go, but through your body. And these are full grown men who are cutting on this.”

So why doesn’t the NFL want to switch to natural grass? Like a lot of things, it always comes down to money.

“It’s money,” Edelman said. “You can put a turf field in that $1.5 million for the year. If you have grass, you have to water it, upkeep it, redo it. There is a lot of maintenance. You have to have a field crew that is always on. We’re counting pennies when it comes to what they are actually making and you would think that the league would want to protect their investments in the players. The horses that race in the race, you’ve got to take care of the horse.”

Edelman said it’s hypocritical of the league owners to preach of player safety when it comes to kickoffs, but not have natural grass fields.

“It’s kind of a bull**** rule that they put in with the whole [kickoff] fair catch thing because it’s a scapegoat,” Edelman said. “We talk about player safety but we don’t have mandatory grass, which is absolute bull****. Guys are tearing their **** . . . feet, ankles, knees, non-contact [injuries] all the time because of these turfs and we haven’t changed that.”

Edelman also noted how international soccer doesn’t hesitate to take care of their players when it comes to natural grass surfaces.

“It’s crazy,” Edelman said. “Whenever there is an international soccer game, if you have a turf stadium they will bring in grass for the international teams to play because they have a rule for their players that they have to play on grass. But we can’t do it for our league and our investment in players.”

He brings up some very valid points and hopefully more and more players will keep voicing these concerns in order to force the owners to make the switch to natural grass. If you’ve got billions of dollars to spend on an NFL franchise, you’ve certainly got enough money to spend the millions on the grass surfaces each year to keep your players healthy.

But NFL owners clearly don’t care about player health or safety. Tacking on the 18th game of the NFL schedule told you all you needed to know about that. The NFL owners clearly only care about money and not about keeping their players rested or fresh throughout the season. We’ll have to see if anything changes with the playing surfaces in the NFL in the future.