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Every NFL stadium will have to install a new playing surface by the start of the 2028 season, the league announced Thursday.
NFL field director Nick Pappas detailed plans for the program that will provide each team with “a library of approved and recognized NFL fields” before the start of the next season.
Teams will have two years to install new approved playing surfaces, whether they are grass, synthetic or hybrid.
Pappas said the fields will be extensively tested and approved by a joint committee with the NFLPA. He compared the test to one that has led to new standards for helmets.
“It’s a kind of red, yellow, green effect, where we’re obviously trying to phase out areas that we’ve deemed less ideal than new areas coming into the industry,” he said.
“This is a big step forward for us. I think it’s something that has been a great result of the work of the Joint Services Committee, the deployment and development of tools that determine appropriate metrics, and ultimately providing us a way to certify the quality of more areas than we have in the past.”
Pappas said the fields are tested in laboratories and on site using two main tools, one called BEAST, which is a traction testing device that mimics the movements of an NFL player and the other called a STRIKE Impact Tester that helps determine the firmness of each field.
The league’s goal is to find as consistent a field as possible across all 30 NFL stadiums, as well as in each stadium throughout the season. Pappas said the “key pillars” for an area are optimized play efficiency, reducing injury risk and player response.
The NFL has no plans to require natural grass fields throughout the league, with Dr. Alan Sills, the league’s chief medical officer, saying that despite players’ widespread preferences for grass fields and complaints about surfaces such as MetLife Stadium where the New York Giants and Jets play, there is no “statistically significant difference” in lower extremity injuries or concussions that can be attributed to the playing surface or any specific surface.
“Surface is just one cause of these lower extremity injuries,” Sills said.
“There are many other factors, including player weight and past history and fatigue and positional adaptability and worn cleats.
“So surfaces are a component, but it’s a complex equation, and so I’m excited about where we are in the work because I think we’ll move away from artificial here and very crude measurements of grass here, and now we can say for any individual surface, let’s look at the biophysical properties of that surface. How might those relate to injury? And then, obviously, how do we optimize them?”
Pappas also shared plans for the Super Bowl to be held at the San Francisco 49ers home on February 8 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
The farm is growing into a sod farm about two hours east of the Bay Area, and Pappas has made several visits over the past 18 months to oversee the farm.
The league will plan to install the field around the third week of January — or later if the 49ers can host playoff games.