Eli Manning Disagrees With Effort to Ban Artificial Turf in NFL

The former Giants quarterback says turf provides a consistent playing surface for every game.

Plenty of current and former NFL players are voicing their outrage toward artificial turf following Aaron Rodgers’s season-ending injury. But Eli Manning is expressing the opposite sentiment. 

The former Giants quarterback doesn’t believe the league should install natural grass in all of its stadiums, citing the logistics of some NFL fields being used for multiple games. For instance, the Jets and Bills played Monday night’s game 24 hours after the Giants and Cowboys clashed on the same MetLife Stadium turf. 

“I think the turf, it gives you a reliable field all the time,” Manning said during an appearance on the Front Office Sports Today podcast. “The Giants played in that same stadium in a big rainstorm. If you played that game and you had to play another game on Monday night on the same field, it would be ripped up and muddy and wet and all messed up anyways.”

Eli Manning doesn't think the NFL should get rid of artificial turf fields.  :: Peter Ackerman/USA TODAY Network

However, some observers might disagree with Manning’s contention that “the turf didn’t have a factor in that injury” in regard to Rodgers’s torn Achilles tendon. It’s unclear whether Rodgers’s left foot would have slid harmlessly on natural grass during that fateful tackle by Bills linebacker Leonard Floyd, thereby allowing him to avoid injury.

Manning is correct in saying that artificial turf fields are more practical for venues with multiple tenants and to avoid messy, potentially hazardous playing surfaces for players in bad weather. But some might counter that he’s supporting the business of the NFL more than player safety.