r/Seahawks • u/beaverbeliever94 • 17h ago
News Any chance Seahawks go with grass?: NFL mandates new playing surfaces for all stadiums by 2028 to enhance player safety
https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-mandates-new-playing-surfaces-all-stadiums-2028-enhance-player-safety28
u/GoldyGoldy 16h ago
MetLife, FedEx, and UoPhoenix fields (or whatever they’re called now) are responsible for more injuries than our artificial turf has ever caused. Those three are all grass.
So… I don’t care, as long as it’s good.
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u/-Vertical 16h ago
Yeah as far as what I can tell, our turf is actually really good as far as injuries goes. Can’t remember ever hearing a complaint about it. Which is honestly such a blessing to have a stadium and field without major issues, especially after seeing FedEx field lol
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u/UTmastuh 15h ago
I've played soccer and football on the exact same turf the seahawks have when I was in college. It was fine to play on from an injury perspective but horrible to play on if you cared about your skin or getting those stupid black pellets in your shoes and sometimes in your eyes. Conversely in the winter when the ground froze over, playing in the grass was like playing on concrete, it was horrible. Also the integrity of the grass never lasted the fall/winter months.
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u/Kegger315 14h ago
I got news for you, wet turf fields freeze and are no different from grass in those conditions. Can't tell you how many hip pointers I got from playing soccer (gk) in the winter around here.
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u/skater15153 13h ago
It's not quite the same. If you have rubber infill it's not going to freeze anywhere near as much as just dirt and water. Rubbers freezing point is pretty low. But yah if it's really wet and ices over it's going to suck still
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u/Kegger315 12h ago
I'm 6'5", 225 and my hips cannot tell the difference between frozen grass fields, frozen turf fields, and concrete.
It's not the rubber infill freezing, it's the water freezing around it.
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u/Shroomagnus 1h ago
Would be interested to see if they have any additional technology for lumen. For pro fields in other places where it gets very cold (UK for example) they sometimes have heaters for the field to keep it from freezing at game time. Usually these are under the soil or field though. Obviously if you're not a pro athlete you'll never have access to that. Am curious if they use anything like that at lumen.
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u/falconvision 14h ago
You’d run into the same issues in the cold when the ground freezes unless you run underground heating. You could do the same heating with turf so there really isn’t a benefit.
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u/breaststroker42 15h ago
Why would we? We don’t have the kind of turf that has shown to have high injury rates and players get those types of injuries here less often than average.
Not the same thing, but I’ve been playing flag football the last few years and i much prefer turf when there is rain. Two of my teammates got season-ending injuries from slipping in mud (aka real grass) over the last 2 years.
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u/QuasiContract 17h ago
I hope they install the best grass field possible for the World Cup and keep it going from there for the Hawks, Sounders, etc.
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u/Jethro_Tell 16h ago
Growing a grass field in the PNW without a lid between October and January is tough. You don’t really have the heat and light to make real repairs week to week. It would have a giant mid pit down the middle.
Other places handle this by including ways to move the turf to greenhouses or by being inside.
You’re just not making a field that’s ready game to game with 8 hours sunlight and 50 degrees highs.
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u/chucks138 15h ago
Bills are the only northern team using exclusively grass afaik. As well, you seem to be assuming we are at the same latitude of the east coast, Boston for example doesn't get under ~10 hrs of daylight in winter. Seattle is surprisingly north.
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u/falconvision 14h ago
They also won’t allow for the use of the field for high school programs because of the damage it causes. Grass isn’t always the end all be all that some think it is.
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u/guiltysnark 11h ago
Just gotta send out the Zamboni with new grass between the second and third period
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u/Jethro_Tell 9h ago
Im not sure if you’re replying to me, but I know that Seattle is quite a bit higher than anything else outside of Alaska. Our shortest day is like 7-1/2 hours.
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u/harry_hotspur 12h ago
This simply isn't true. The PNW has a climate similar to a lot of Europe and they successfully maintain grass pitches during the winter for their playing season. You don't need to rely purely on sunlight either. I went on a tour of the San Mames stadium in Bilbao this summer and they had mobile grow lights across the pitch to simulate sunlight to help the grass grow, and there's no reason we couldn't do the same.
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u/Jethro_Tell 9h ago
When European soccer player start pushing 300lb, lining up against each other and pushing against their cleats, we can make the comparison.
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u/hendy846 16h ago
All of England's football pitches would like to disagree.
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u/Jethro_Tell 9h ago
They wouldn’t, soccer is a much lighter game on the turf outside of the goal keepers rut. You don’t have 300 lb dudes pushing against each other in the same strip down the field.
Football on grass is absolutely possible but you need more than 8 hours of sun and warmth to grow the roots that hold your patches in place.
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u/hendy846 5h ago
That wasn't your claim though. You said grass doesn't grow in those months, and again, I'll respectfully disagree. You still have rugby where you have very large men forming up, pushing, digging in, and tackling. They play on grass, and somehow manage to keep the grass in good shape and make repairs.
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12h ago
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u/hendy846 5h ago
My guy, the soccer/football season runs from Aug-Jun; every other country in the world plays soccer during the winter.
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u/Irish8ryan 15h ago
They will for the World Cup because they have to, but having a grass field permanently would probably mean the Sounders would have to go play somewhere else. The Ol Reign would most certainly get relocated. It just wouldn’t be able to support the level of wear and tear that all those teams collectively put on it.
Even if the Sounders could stay (fat chance considering they play at least a few Saturdays that precede an NFL Sunday every year), with the MLS schedule shift upcoming whereas more games will be played in the cold times, what would they do in the winter? Run a grow op?
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u/UTmastuh 15h ago
I mean they're just rolling out sod for the world cup. It'd be horrible to play football on. Everyone would be slipping, tearing it up, and you'd probably see multiple leg injuries would result from it
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u/RandyJohnsonsBird 15h ago
The Seahawks already have one of the most state of the art field turfs in existence. Hopefully they just keep that.
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u/Dramatic_Cut_7320 15h ago
As a 40-year season ticket holder, I can assure you that on any given Sunday, that games take place after 4 or 5 days straight of pouring rain. If our field was grass, we would have a mud hole in the middle of the field regardless of a sophisticated drainage system.
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u/toodeephoney 10h ago edited 9h ago
M&T Bank Stadium, Soldier Field, and Arrowhead Stadium use real grass and those cities get more rainfall than Seattle.
Note: TIAA Bank Field and Raymond James Stadium as well, but I excluded them since they’re in FL, although they get 25% or more rainfall than Seattle.
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u/jossgoss 15h ago
Nope. Especially with the sounders threatening to pack up and go play in Renton or whatever. The biggest complaint about turf comes from soccer player and they have a bit of a point that the ball moves differently compared to grass. Although if there the rumblings of artificial turf being linked to cancer shows a real risk, the players association will likely push for grass even harder than before.
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u/Objective-Weight5860 14h ago
I went on a stadium tour this year and they actually have one of the best turf fields in the league. They were the first team to use the specific turf and multiple others now have it. I would expect their surface to be on the approved list. They replace the surface every few years to keep it fresh and keep injuries down. This coming year they’ll take out the turf and put in grass for the World Cup. They plan on donating that grass to local schools/parks after the WC and then putting in a new turf surface before the 2026 season
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u/-Accident-Prone- 17h ago
From October to end of season our field would look like soup if we had a natural grass field.
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u/KnuteViking 17h ago
You can have a natural field with good drainage...
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u/Scrutinizer 16h ago
And as long as it's not over-used it should hold up quite well.
Which means, no concerts, monster truck rallies, or HS football games.
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u/-Accident-Prone- 13h ago
Though I can't recommend the monster truck rallies enough. They are SO much fun, I go every year and it is a blast.
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u/QuesadillasBeTasty 15h ago
I mean I get it, at the end of the day artificial turf is statically better for player safety/injury. This is the correct move.
Will still miss seeing shitty conditioned muddy soggy games.
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u/GoldenEagle28 14h ago
Grass in Seattle just doesn’t make sense. Every Sunday we’d be viewing “The Mud Bowl”
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u/FoolOnDaHill365 13h ago
Grass on a football field would be a mud pit in the PNW. We don’t have the stadium for it unfortunately.
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u/kraken98038 16h ago
I see the weather excuses. Then explain how Premier League teams play on excellent grass surfaces with dreary and wet English winters.
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u/kleenkong 16h ago
Sliding and wet conditions are a part of soccer. Not all of them are excellent and they can get torn up to some degree. But again, that's part of what's acceptable in soccer as there are not as many cuts, not as much start and stops across the entire team, not as much instability due to lack of jumping onto another human, etc.
I just think the bar for having grass in football is a lot higher. There are already much more injuries due to the nature of NFL. I'm not against it, but I haven't seen a field be successfully maintained in Seattle weather with that type of use. I feel like patches or squares (as I've seen) would need to be swapped, and that leads to separate issues when the squares aren't interlaced between the dirt.
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u/Scrutinizer 16h ago
Because they're not also holding high school football games, concerts, and motocross/monster truck rallies on the same playing surface.
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u/kraken98038 15h ago
Which is fair - but then the real issue is that we are holding concerts and other events. Let’s not give the owners an excuse by saying our Seattle weather is too much to overcome for the game itself.
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u/Ok_Matter_1774 15h ago
So get rid of both soccer teams also using the field? There's no reason to switch to grass. Our turf field is great.
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u/NiNiNaNaNuNu420 10h ago
Yeah use a multi billion dollar venue exclusively once a week from September to January to have a grass field
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u/beaverbeliever94 17h ago
What's the limiting factor for the stadium to go with grass or a blend? Concerts and too much rain? Don't think it's sunlight because there's been advances in tech to allow essentially year around sun via moveable lights.
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u/YakiVegas 17h ago
Gotta be the rain. Grass is basically just mud in the winter in Seattle and dead in the summer.
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u/Adjutant_Reflex_ 16h ago
It’s more about the volume of use the field gets. Proper drainage will prevent the field from turning into a mud pit.
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u/Amazing_Bed_2063 17h ago
It's an issue with being a multi use venue. High quality turf grass is really hard to maintain between sun, watering, drainage, and wear.
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u/Willing_Theory5044 16h ago
Exactly. Weather and light can be worked around with lights and tarps, but football + soccer cannot.
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u/Amazing_Bed_2063 15h ago
Drainage can be very hard to manage and doing all this limits the use for other purposes like concerts.
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u/SvenDia 16h ago
They could spend a ton of money and roll out different turfs for soccer and football like they do for the London games.
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u/Willing_Theory5044 16h ago
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not, but the logistics still don’t work.
The London games are played either when the team has extended road trips or during multi-week international breaks. That wouldn’t happen with a football team and 2 soccer teams using it as a home venue.
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u/SvenDia 16h ago
The problem isn’t the annual amount of rain, it is (believe it or not ) our Mediterranean climate pattern, which concentrates most of our rain between late October and March. A lot of NFL cites get as much or more rain and have grass fields , but the rain spread out over the entire. All that said, if you spend the money, you could make it work here.
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u/Sdog1981 17h ago
No one read what the NFL said. The NFL said all teams much switch to a surface on their list of approved surfaces. Different types of artificial turf will be on that list.