NFL players continue push for grass fields on heels of World Cup - ESPN

Ahead of Sunday's FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium, dozens of NFL players including Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams and Washington Commanders offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil took to social media with the hashtag #WorthTheCost to express their desire for permanent grass playing surfaces on.

MetLife Stadium is among the venues that replaced its artificial turf with grass for the 78 FIFA World Cup games hosted by NFL stadiums this summer.

«If stadiums can make grass work for the World Cup, they can make it work for NFL players. We're #WorthTheCost,» Tunsil wrote in a post on X.

Green Bay linebacker Zaire Franklin also chimed in.

«The cost of doing nothing is paid for by players' bodies,» Franklin wrote in his own post. «Make grass mandatory. We're #WorthTheCost.»

The renewed social media push comes after the NFLPA released a statement at the beginning of the FIFA World Cup urging team owners to make the switch to natural grass surfaces. At FIFA's request, all 11 NFL stadiums hosting World Cup matches installed natural grass playing surfaces. Seven of those stadiums traditionally use synthetic turf as their primary playing surface for NFL games and will return to that when the tournament concludes Sunday.

«The temporary installation of natural grass fields for the World Cup is a choice by certain NFL team owners to do for soccer players what they refuse to do for NFL players,» the NFLPA said in a statement posted to social media five weeks ago. «It's no longer a question of capability; the technology exists, the expertise exists and the resources exist to install the high-level grass fields that our players overwhelmingly prefer.

»We have seen the meaningful investments made to meet the standard for