It’s not often that the field itself generates more notoriety than the players performing on it, but that’s been the unfortunate case for the turf at MetLife Stadium in recent times. In an attempt to save money, some teams have begun to favor turf fields over actual grass.
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While that has allowed them to cut corners on maintenance costs, it’s also created a rather unsafe environment for players. From 2021 to 2023, more than a dozen members of the New York Giants’ roster suffered some variation of an ACL tear.
After experiencing the field for himself in Week 9, George Kittle now believes that it’s time to have a much more serious discussion about not just turf fields in general, but also the lack of consistency throughout the league’s various fields.
“This was the last stadium that I had never played in,” Kittle noted after San Francisco’s 34-24 victory over the G-Men. “So it was my first experience on the turf, really.”
“When someone’s field is the b*tt of a joke throughout all of social media, constantly, on every NFL meme page, everyone jokes about how bad it is, I feel like, at that point, someone should take a look at it. No NFL field should be the butt of a joke, ever. All fields should have a level of safety for it… There shouldn’t be 12 different turfs and 12 different grass fields and then a couple guys have the same things. I just think that’s weird.”
George Kittle on the MetLife turf:
“When someone's field is the butt of a joke around all of social media constantly, on every NFL meme page, and everybody jokes about how bad it is, I feel like at that point, someone should just take a look at it. No NFL field should be the… pic.twitter.com/xjlE0bK8uz
— OurSF49ers (@OurSf49ers) November 3, 2025
The six-time Pro Bowler also highlighted the fact that “It’s not like basketball players play on different hardwood” before ultimately suggesting that “it just feels weird to me.” In that sense, he’s certainly not wrong.
The National Football League has a long-standing history of favoring profits over players. Everything from concussion research to the finer points of field maintenance has all been suppressed or hidden from the public at one point in time or another.
Kittle also mentioned that he would “love to” be the guy who could help to investigate and handle this issue, but subsequently admitted “that’s really way above my pay grade” and that he doesn’t “make the money to make those decisions.”
It won’t happen any time soon, but maybe one day, if enough is finally said, we may finally be able to return to a world in which football is played exclusively on grass.
