Posted on 09/12/2023 3:45:39 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Aaron Rodgers' devastating season-ending injury in his debut with the New York Jets on Monday night has reignited the debate surrounding artifical turf fields, prompting several NFL players to call out the league.
An MRI on Tuesday confirmed that Rodgers, 39, suffered a torn Achilles on the fourth snap of his career with the Jets in the team’s overtime victory over the Buffalo Bills, according to multiple reports.
He was sacked by linebacker Leonard Floyd and eventually carted off the field.
Several of Rodgers’ teammates pointed to the field conditions at MetLife Stadium, specifically the turf, which was replaced earlier this year after overwhelming criticism around the league.
"We wanted the NFL to protect the players with grass fields, but the NFL is more worried about making money," Jets receiver and Rodgers’ longtime teammate in Green Bay Randall Cobb said via The Athletic.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Not sure if that approach is going to work.
What I don’t understand is why no one has created artificial turf that isn’t rock hard and is more like real grass. How hard could it be to do that?
And no one talks about the concussions the turf causes. The Miami quarterback has had his head slammed onto the turf several times.
He’s old. Almost 40. One can’t expect him to be at peak efficiency.
Oh, to be 40 again. I’m 56, and 40 sounds so young. Funny how things change.
Not to mention all the high school stadiums that have it.
I think the NFL can afford it.
We toured Lambeau Field last year and learned that they use a mix of real and fake grass. The field is about half and half of each. The fake grass is long, green polyester fibers, with several of them connected to a small spike deep in the soil, like 8 inches down. The real grass grows in and around those fibers and the fake fibers help strengthen the roots of the real grass.
Somehow the soil and the field drainage is set up so that they could get 4 inches of rain in an hour before any puddle would form on the field. Pretty impressive, I thought.
That's interesting. From all the comments about hardness under artificial turf, I was wondering if the problem is the medium it sits on. Soil vs. ground-up automobile tires, or whatever they use. What you describe sounds like an effort to combine the two, which will be great if it can be made to work.
As we know all too well, natural turf gets soggy and yucky with a lot of rain. But when conditions are right, what makes natural turf great is that it has roots that go down 12 inches in soil. That makes it flexible. If soil is kept well-aerated, it offers traction, and yet also has some give, and players get protection from vertical impact (concussion) and lateral stress (muscle pulls, ankle rolls, knee blowouts).
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