maineman209
Veteran Starter w/Big Long Term Deal
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2017
- Messages
- 9,642
- Reaction score
- 20,258
The Pats players and coaches have complained about the Gillette surface, but it's not clear that it is worse from the point of view of susceptibility to ACL injury than other turfs. Edelman, of course, injured himself in a non-contact injury on the Detroit field.
I haven't seen any hard data about the pros and cons of turf against natural grass. I'd assumed that the relative rarity of ACLs in soccer might be significant, but there are quite a few in rugby, which is played on natural grass. Of course, given their economic interests, I wouldn't expect the NFL to be rushing to publish data that shows turf in a bad light ...
Rivers' ACL was also non-contact - on a ST play, IIRC. And I think that happened on the Texans' practice field in North Carolina somewhere.
-----
EDIT:
Now that I think about it, I seem to recall some football analysis site charted different types of injuries broken out by brand/model of artificial turf, and that there was a significant variance. Can't remember what site, though.