The 2023 NFL Week 13 Roundup | The Perfection of Green, Nylon Carpeting; Individual Results Might Vary

It was a fool’s errand and well known in architectural professional circles at the time as a career killer. NO architect on-the-record wanted the job and those who accepted held their noses in signing on. The project: Met Life Stadium, a $1.6B megawatt stadium home to the New York Giants and New York Jets in East Rutherford, NJ. The 2005 project (for a 2010 opening), typically a trophy GET, was notorious among design firms as an exercise in futility; to please two owners with diametrically opposed design philosophies. The Giants desired a traditional style stadium complete with rusticated stone and exposed steel framework. The Jets, paradoxically, demanded a sleek and contemporary aesthetic composed purely of metal and glass. Dozens upon dozens of dozens of design iterations later, a final rendering was delivered and approved by both teams in time for the stadium’s September 2007 groundbreaking. The results speak for themselves; an ultimate watered-down, disorienting design by committee. A slim base of limestone-like stonework is topped to the sky with 38 vertical ribbons of aluminum louvres, fronting 50,000 square feet of hidden uninterrupted glass. Undermounted exterior and interior LED lighting can illuminate a rainbow of programmed colors to customize the stadium for any suited purpose or desire. IN sum, Met Life is known in design circles as an abomination with some likening the end product facility to little more than a quizzical 14-story ventilation shaft. While the Giants and Jets might have differed markedly in design ethos, they did agree on one crucial component: the installation of artificial turf. Design aside, the turf to this day is singlehandedly responsible for Met Life’s perennial player basement-ranking of League facilities. NO other stadium in the NFL has become such a hotbed of controversy for the litany of injuries resulting directly from the one thing the New York teams were able to jointly agree upon. 14 players since just 2020 (including Aaron Rodgers this past Fall) have complained of lower-extremity non-contact injury directly attributable to Met Life’s turf. And so, Met Life replaced its turf with a newer, more sophisticated — still artificial — varietal that the facility hopes to quiet the clamor. One thing it won’t do is to silence the natural grass versus artificial turf philosophical debate; an argument still raging with the fury of a thousand 2005-era Giants-Jets architectural design consultations.

In purely romantic terms, everyone agrees that most all games of all stripes ought to be played atop a natural sod surface. The frictional touch, the dewy smell, the stain-prone emerald color, its forgiving nature, all unmistakable hallmarks that harken back to nostalgia-filled childhood neighborhood baseball matches and family Thanksgiving football scrimmages set against colorful, fluttering autumnal foliage. At a realistic and professional level, a field of play carpeted with natural grass is doable and preferred among a certain subset of NFL groundskeepers. The pure cost of maintaining a natural grass field can easily exceed $3M annually. This cost includes a small army of caretakers whose sole job is to maintain the field’s playability. This includes the complete replacement of the entire field every 1.5 to two games for those football stadiums located in colder climates, at a tony cost of $400K for each in-season cycle. The Dolphins, for example, in 2019 purchased 80 acres of land in West Palm Beach just for the purpose of growing replacement sod for Hard Rock Stadium. The performance of grass over the course of a season is also very problematic. Rainy, snowy or freezing weather, soil compaction and divots do cause serious injury if left untended to. And grass doesn’t stand up well to large, heavy usage events such as concerts and the like. So choosing natural grass, while romantic, is neither for the faint of heart nor short of pocket.

And so to complement and monetize the well-known heavy maintenance and shortcomings that accompany a grass field, the artificial turf industry arrived to market versatility, all-weather durability and Hollywood-quality good looks that only artificial turf could deliver. IN the beginning it was an easy sell. The Astrodome in 1966 was the first professional facility to install ChemGrass (manufactured and unfortunately named by Monsanto), a short-fiber, tight nylon green carpet atop a compacted soil base. After player complaints of discomfort, Monsanto a year later added an elastomeric foam layer between the soil and the carpet. Monsanto rechristened its creation AstroTurf and the product would go on to enjoy meteoric success and household name recognition throughout the next two decades. Venue managers were immediately enamored with the turf’s durability, it’s ability to endure high volumes of traffic while maintaining a consistent playing surface no matter the weather. AstroTurf afforded cities the ability to construct multiuse stadiums ornamented with movable seating that could host concerts and sporting events back-to-back with tight turnarounds without damaging the playing surface underfoot. Further, venues fell in love with AstroTurf’s pricing. A one-time setup cost south of $1M followed by minimal maintenance needs penciled itself into a sports world sensation. Never an industry to rest on its laurels and opportunistically always on the lookout to market product iterations to existing and new customers, artificial turf makers developed second and third generation turfs that looked and acted increasingly like natural sod. The shock-absorbing pad was thickened, the individual fibers lengthened and the entire composition was infilled; that is, filled with silica sand to allow the fibers to stand upright and flex convincingly to movement. The resulting end-product was said to be the industry’s best approximation of all-weather natural grass yet.

Kiefer USA, a leading athletic surface design company, in 2002 replaced the sand infill with a triple-layer mix of silica and crumb rubber and demonstrated to stadium owners the improved versatility, consistency and resiliency of its most sophisticated artificial turf creation to date. Its UBU Sports Speed Series slit-film turf went on to become the de-facto League-standard for stadiums designed in the early 2000s. MetLife stadium included. Over the course of the next two decades, Kiefer and its ilk would go on to capture the wallets of 16 NFL Teams, precisely half the addressable football market. Over the same time, a mysterious emergence of lower extremity, non-contact injury began to collect. ACL tears, ankle sprains, MCL tears, Achilles tears, patellar tendon tears, you name it. Statistically, the data painted a complex picture not easily explained by any single contributing factor. Could it be possible that the style of offense or defense had changed. Might it be that body composition was different from players in the decades before. Was gameplay quickening, causing undue stress on player’s lower extremities. Could artificial turf not be as forgiving as advertised, after all? Perhaps all of the above. The NFL Player’s union was quick to commission grass versus artificial turf studies that found a 30% increased likelihood of player injury when playing atop the latter. Officially, the NFL has not taken an official position.

Which leads us back to the $1.6B ventilation towner/Met Life stadium. The venue is unique in that it’s in use every week of the Season playing host to alternating Giants and Jets home games. Sprinkle in touring artists including Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce and Taylor Swift and you have the makings of a high-volume traffic jam that would test just about any surface. The aging turf at Met Life in just the past two years has claimed the seasons of 14 players including Nick Bosa, Jimmy Garoppolo, Raheem Mostert and more. The stadium, after vehement player criticism and ridicule, replaced its turf in the 2022 offseason with a multi million dollar state-of-the-art artificial replacement: FieldTurf CORE, a thicker, denser, more grass-like turf. Remind me where we’ve heard this pitch before. The 2023 season has so far been unkind to FieldTurf, MetLife and the players within. Most famously, Aaron Rodgers suffered an Achilles tear within minutes of his Opening Week debut earlier this Fall, ending his season with just three plays. Incredibly, the star turf claimed Dolphins LB Jaelan Phillips on Black Friday. But then just last night, star Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence suffered an ankle injury and needed to be helped off the field to the sidelines where his Season is very much in doubt. Jacksonville’s TIAA Field is revered for its real grass playing surface.

So while the injures keep piling up in East Rutherford, absolute aggregate numbers must be reflected against the stadium’s 100% in-season usage verses practically every other venue in the NFL (aside from SoFi in LA) that’s used just half the season. SoFi, for its part, is home to an inordinate assemblage of ACL injuries. The NFLPA has made it clear that the players who make up its ranks want to play on real grass. Stadium owners, who foot the bill, have adopted a more nuanced position balancing venue usage (when not hosting NFL games), cost and the reality that implementing an all-natural grass solution won’t in and of itself prevent injury. So the philosophical debate continues, governed just as much by the sands of time as an owner’s balance sheet. Until 2026, that is. Grass fields will be installed at seven NFL stadiums (Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta, AT&T in Dallas, NRG in Houston, BC Place Vancouver, SoFi in LA, Gillette in Boston, Lumen in Seattle and MetLife in New Jersey) as a FIFA requirement in hosting the 2026 World Cup. The sod will be quickly replaced with artificial turf once the soccer parade moves on in late Summer just in time for the 2026 NFL Season. Leave it to the entrepreneurial American spirit to pave paradise with a green nylon carpet nearly 60 years ago, leaving in its wake large ripples of dissent (and disciples) that show no signs of dissipating any time soon. MetLife’s architects in 2005 couldn’t have been more right.

As we turn to the NFL at Week 13, a classic tale of haves and have nots is cementing itself. The week in review is also an example in pedigreed teams having been force fed an unwanted helping of humble pie. Case in point was San Francisco at Eagles this past Sunday afternoon. An NFC showcase showdown of showdowns, the 49ers routing of Philly at Philly, 42–19, didn’t quite dovetail with a powerhouse Eagles team with the League’s best record. SF’s turbocharged Offense powered by QB Brock Purdy and reliably innovative Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel lit up PHL’s secondary and turned the lights out. What SF’s Offense began, the team’s DEF completed. The Eagles, shook, were left quivering, clutching onto their mere pedestrian status. A status they’re not quite used to; a status no tush push could help to seal the deal. On Sunday night, the Chiefs were surprisingly ousted on the road by the then underwater Packers, albeit with a great assist from an uncalled egregious pass interference violation against Green Bay. The Packers, with inspired and increasingly sturdy Jordan Love under center, have knit together a nice little mid-Season go of it with 3 WINs in a row. What was thought to be rebuilding year is turning into one painted in pleasant contention. Packers fans are having every second of it. KC, on the other hand, while still dominant and intimidating, has lost that spark, that thrill, that urgency, that immediacy. Their 8–4 record perfectly reflects team’s now league-wide diminished expectations for last year’s Super Bowl champions.

Elsewhere in Arlington, Seattle took on America’s Team and for the better part of Thursday night’s game it appeared as if DAL’s goose was cooked. But true to form, QB Dak Prescott led a 4th quarter powerhouse surge to send the Hawks away with broken wings, 41–35. An all-star outing from Dak couldn’t quite dispel the narrative that the Cowboys are GREAT against weak teams and weak against great ones. Not good when conditions are being affixed upon supposed success stores. DAL has a rough patch in PHL, BUF, MIA and DET ahead so this working theory is sure to be tested beneath blinding lights. Over in Pittsburgh, alarm bells. Coming off a high and heady, validating WIN over Cincy, absolute disaster. Steel City lost as home to the terrible Cards, 10–24. In a game that elapsed nearly four and a half weather-delayed hours, the conclusion couldn’t come soon enough for PIT. They lost QB Kenny Pickett in the first half and star pass rusher TJ Watt. That the team went belly-up so quickly to a losing team is beyond concerning with a playoff perch increasingly out of reach now. Coach Mike Tomlin put it succinctly as a “bad day at the office.” Touché!

In our Round Robin, the Colts of all teams are sporting a nice little renaissance with 4Ws including their latest victims, the lowly Titans. The Pats lost — again, naturally — but the fact that the Chargers only managed a 6–0 shutout probably speaks more to LA’s dereliction of duty than NE’s neglect of the basics. The Jets lost to the ATL, hopefully squashing any rumors of Aaron Rodgers’ much-rumored late-season comeback. For what is the question begged. Washington continues to swirl the drain, the Rams sent the troubled Brownies back to the drawing board and the Texans (with standout CJ Stroud) ended Denver’s short-lived victory parade. With six teams on BYE, we head into the final stretch of the Season where we suspect who lives to see January.