At the start of the 2023 regular season, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the use of synthetic turf by saying that some players actually prefer it to grass.
“You have other players who like playing on the turf field, because it’s faster,” Goodell said. “So you’ve got mixed opinions. What we want to go on is science, we want to go on what’s the best from an injury standpoint.”
But the NFL Players Association says that the percentage of players who prefer synthetic turf is tiny, and those players don’t prefer it because it’s faster. NFLPA Executive Director Lloyd Howell said on Wednesday that a survey of players found that 92 percent prefer to play on grass, 6 percent have no preference between grass and synthetic turf, and 2 percent prefer synthetic turf.
Howell added that most of the players who prefer turf are kickers, and their preference isn’t about injuries — kickers suffer relatively few injuries on any surface — but about being able to plant their feet well and kick the ball off a clean surface.
There may be a few players here and there who like synthetic turf because they think they run faster on it, but it’s clear from NFLPA surveys that players overwhelmingly prefer grass, and kickers’ reasons for preferring turf don’t apply to the overwhelming majority of players who think turf is harder on their bodies.
