MetLife Stadium should have grass for Giants, Jets and NFL players, not just FIFA footballers in 2026 World Cup
If they can put grass in MetLife Stadium for the World Cup, they can put it down for the NFL.
If they can take care of the world’s best ‘football’ players when they play in New Jersey, they can do what’s best for the world’s best American football players, too.
FIFA announced on Sunday that MetLife Stadium will host eight matches during the 2026 World Cup tournament, headlined by the World Cup Final on July 19.
The turf pitch will be converted to grass for the World Cup games to meet FIFA’s standards. That costs money.
The stadium is using $400,000 in funds from the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority — which owns the lease on the stadium’s land — to turn the field to grass for this summer’s Copa America games, per The Athletic.
Giants co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch, and Jets owner Woody Johnson, would have to foot a big bill to convert their surface to grass and maintain it.
But a slightly improved bottom line for billionaires and millionaires should not take priority over the safety of the players who bring those dollars in with their talents and hard work.
The NFL players’ union has called for all teams to switch permanently to grass in their stadiums, citing data that it makes the game safer. The league, naturally, occasionally finds its own selective data to push back.
Still, there is no regional argument for why a grass field couldn’t be maintained in New Jersey when the Baltimore Ravens, Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders all play on grass in the Northeast already.
If it saved even one ACL or Achilles, it would be worth it.
Mara, to his credit, said last March that he hopes to move to grass permanently one day at the Giants’ and Jets’ home stadium.
“It would have to go down for the World Cup,” Mara said last March of grass at MetLife. “My hope is that we can get to a day some point in the future that we can have a grass field that we’re able to maintain with two different teams and all the other events. I think we can get there at some point. Maybe it’s a hybrid product or something.”
The Giants and Jets installed a new “monofilament” turf at last offseason in response to harsh criticism from the union and players around the league, including some of their own, about their previous “slit film” turf’s connection to frequent player injuries.
Players were included in the conversations about which new turf the teams should install, and the change represented progress. But players have still complained.
Houston Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud said after suffering a concussion in a road loss against the Jets that he “hit the back of my head” on the ground and it felt like “I damn near hit my head on cement, kind of. It was cold, and the turf I guess isn’t the best I’ve learned.”
At the old Giants Stadium, they once switched from the infamous AstroTurf to a grass tray system in 2000, but the field quality was still poor and that led to the installation of a different field turf in 2003.
More than 20 years have passed, though. There is a reason the best soccer players in the world play on grass only in the World Cup.
And frankly, when the NFL’s experts are traveling internationally for their collaborative summits with these international ‘football’ leagues and stadiums, they should be harnessing new knowledge on how to maintain grass back home as they do overseas.
The planned installation of grass for the 2026 World Cup is a reminder that they’ll put grass down in MetLife Stadium when provided with enough incentive.
So if they’ll do it for Kylian Mbappe, Kevin De Bruyne, Marcus Rashford and Jamal Musiala, they can do it for the Giants’ Dexter Lawrence, the Jets’ Garrett Wilson and the NFL’s players, too.
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