MetLife Stadium can never catch a break. It draws plenty of flack from fans on a yearly basis, but even the labor union representing NFL players is fed up with the much-maligned venue in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The United States is hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup. MetLife Stadium is one of the host venues. It is scheduled to host eight matches, including the Final.
While we still have over a year until these matches begin, MetLife Stadium is already preparing for the big stage. The venue will be hosting nine matches in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, starting Sunday, June 15. On Wednesday, PIX11 Sports shared a video to X displaying the all-grass pitch that has been installed at the stadium.
The NFLPA wasn’t happy with this. Its official X account replied to PIX11’s video with the sarcastic caption, “Looks nice.”
Following a string of severe lower-body injuries on MetLife Stadium’s field over the past few years – most famously, Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles tear in September 2023 – NFL players have been calling for MetLife Stadium to switch to a natural grass surface. It is part of a push for all NFL stadiums to play on grass, as players tend to believe that natural grass surfaces are safer than synthetic surfaces.
Former Giants team captain Julian Love said in 2022 that “the stats have shown we are on one of the worst fields in the league.”
The Jets and Giants actually installed a new synthetic surface at the stadium months before Rodgers’ injury, which they believed was safer. In March 2023, it was reported by ESPN that MetLife Stadium had installed an updated version of FieldTurf called “FieldTurf Core,” which is the first multilayer dual-polymer monofilament fiber.
As stated in ESPN’s report, “The heavyweight infill design claims to deliver a lower incidence of total injuries compared to various infill weights. The performance and durability of the surface are backed by multiple independent certified sources and was tested to 200,000 cycles on the fiber wear test by Penn State’s Center for Sports Surface Research.”
With Rodgers’ injury occurring on the second regular season possession of the new field, calls to switch to natural grass quickly heated back up despite the instillation of the new surface. Two years later, those calls have not quieted, as evidenced by the NFLPA’s tweet.
While the NFL continues to claim that the data does not show a significant difference in the injury rates between turf and grass, the NFLPA vehemently disagrees.
Former NFLPA president JC Tretter stated in an article on the NFLPA’s official website, “Players have a 28% higher rate of non-contact lower extremity injuries when playing on artificial turf. Of those non-contact injuries, players have a 32% higher rate of non-contact knee injuries on turf and a staggering 69% higher rate of non-contact foot/ankle injuries on turf compared to grass.” This was based on injury data collected from 2012-18.
The NFL’s turf war continues, and MetLife Stadium is right at the center of it.
