NFL & NFLPA Agree On New Policy To Measure Field Conditions

The NFL and NFLPA took a massive step this week to create a baseline for all league fields. According to ESPN, all 30 playing surfaces will use a “Strike” device to measure conditions and ensure player safety.

NFL field director Nick Pappas released a statement after the announcement.

“We’re going to come up with our own performance specification document for the NFL field. Ultimately, it will be a regulatory document that says, ‘Hey, look, an NFL field should meet these standards.’ Right now, our standards have been somewhat vague, but it’s because we didn’t want to just arbitrarily adopt something that could be wrong.”

With what feels like a rise in injuries over the last few years, especially of the non-contact variety, there has been increased pressure on the league to ensure better standards for player safety. Some have suggested eliminating turf fields, but scientific evidence does not explicitly state a correlation between the two.

The NFL will continue to use Clegg readings for the 2024 season as the league adapts to Strike.

“That is what we believe is going to give us a more true value to what the player is feeling and a better way to measure our fields moving forward. The Clegg has done great things for us in the initial low-hanging fruit of getting us to an improved standardization, but there may be some diminishing values at this point on it where we need to take it a step further to better understand our fields.”

The NFL has a monster week one in a fortnight, with games on four out of five days, including their first-ever contest in Brazil between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers. With an international competition on the docket, the league must ensure a uniform surface across all stadiums, start off the season right, and bring positive PR to the teams.