NFL Field Director Nick Pappas Breaks Down The Turf Vs Grass Debate | 7/21/26

[00:00:00]the turf itself in some of these fields um newer but yeah I go back to the old days with AstroTurf and that was you know concrete with carpet on it but the advances in technology where where are we now with trying to make it as close to a friendly surface for these players >> yeah we're we're tfold beyond where we started when you look at the old Astro Turfs as as AstroTurf kind of had the original the original product right but when you look at it. Now, these infilled 3G style systems have come so far, but quite honestly, Dan, I think we're just cracking the surface, no pun intended, on on some of this, right? Largely, we've left it to the industry, to the the the artificial turf industry to come to us with products. Well, the NFL and the NFL PA are the only group that's really complaining about these artificial surfaces. We don't hear a lot of it coming out of the power four conferences of NCAA. We certainly don't hear a lot of it at the municipality or the high school level, but we're the ones who are pushing the artificial turf industry saying, "Hey, we want better, but what is better?" Right? We've got a quantified better. How do we do that?

[00:01:06]And to our benefit, we've got what is called our our joint field surface safety and performance committee. The this is a committee between the NFL and FLPA that's tied to the the collective bargaining agreement where we sit down regularly and discuss surface improvement. and we're able to go back and apply pressure to the industry to say this is what we mean when we say better. These are the target metrics.

[00:01:26]This is how we're measuring fields.

[00:01:27]These are how we're objectifying what better is. That way we can start to actually see those changes. I'm not sure where you stand on this excuse or maybe reason, but uh you have owners who say, "Look, we have multiple events on our field in our stadium, and if we're having concerts there, you can't have natural grass." Uh is that a legitimate reason to not have natural turf? Yeah, I think the way it's been evaluated obviously when we look across injury data, right? We no longer see this as a as an injury issue, right? In the past there was concerns that turf was driving up the injury rate. When we look at the injury rate and the severity of injury, and what do I mean by that? I mean the amount of ACL's, the amount of uh extended time loss injuries, those real burdensome injuries. When we look at that, it's a it's a split grass versus turf, right? So, it becomes just the injury rate of playing football at this point. that's kind of been a a a part of the decision-making to say, well, if it's not going to cause more injuries and it is just as safe, and it does give those facilities the opportunity to make good on whatever promises they have to uh the the local communities or whatever they've deemed the way that they need to operate their building, then it's been a a a great option for them to use because it does allow for higher use case uh avoidance of adverse weather conditions, so on and so forth. Now, does does that mean that um that that won't change? No.

[00:02:55]There's an opportunity to to say, "Yeah, there's an injury perspective, but how can we get it to feel more like the players are asking us to make it feel?"

[00:03:04]>> Talking to Nick Papis. He works for the NFL as their field director. I'm going to let you pick the stadium where you can get tackled on. What turf surface do you want to be tackled on?

[00:03:16]>> If I'm getting tackled, I don't want to get tackled by any of these any of these guys. I've seen them all up close. Um, but for me, quite honestly, I know from from, and I'm biased here, I know from mechanical testing, when you talk about surface hardness, they're all within the same level of compliance. All of our fields are within the same range. So, any given Sunday, Monday, whatever day of the week you want to play, uh, you can pick any field you want. I've got confidence that the field managers there have ensured that it meets compliance, and I don't think one's going to be harder than the other. So you have no soft landing spot that you would say turf or natural grass.

[00:03:52]>> I think this is where there becomes some confusion about what what we feel and what's being described, right? A number of years ago with the the NFL PA, we did a player survey and we actually went out and asked players tell us which fields feel hard, which fields feel soft, right? And what they gave us in a response was inverse to what our mechanical testing was telling us. With that, we redeveloped the tools that we use to to measure the fields. And now we know that what may feel quote unquote hard is actually more of a amount of energy returned to the body. So from a surface hardness perspective, they're all within the same compliance. What we're now chasing is how do we get that amount of energy lost to the surface or amount of energy gained back to the surface to feel more like grass.

[00:04:35]Obviously, that's the target margin.

[00:04:37]now, unless for some reason we can determine that there's a an injury correlation to it. But that's what we hear the players say. They want it to feel more like grass.