Over the past few years, a debate has emerged about whether or not it’s actually safe for players to play on artificial turf surfaces as opposed to grass surfaces. While plenty of data seems to indicate a higher risk of injury on artificial turf than on grass, the NFL has downplayed and outright denied this notion several times. But that might be hard to do with the 2022 data.
According to a report from league insider Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, the injury data from the 2022 season is “awful.”
“While not quite an epidemic yet at the NFL level, a league source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT that the 2022 injury data for turf fields was ‘awful,'” Florio wrote for Pro Football Talk. “At this week’s ownership meetings in Minneapolis, NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills acknowledged that the ‘numbers weren’t good,’ without getting into specifics. None of the owners pressed for specifics, we’re told.”
Florio said that Pro Football Talk has requested the injury data from the NFL, but “the league has not yet responded to two separate emails on the issue.”
The NFL has long maintained that there is no significant difference between the injury rates on turf compared to the injury rates on grass. But this data seems to suggest that’s not the case.
It will be interesting to see if the actual data ever becomes available.
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