Super Bowl LIII MVP Julian Edelman rips NFL over one change the league refuses to make

Julian Edelman hasn’t played in the NFL since retiring after the 2020 season, but he’s still pushing the league to make at least one big change. 

During an interview on Fubo Sports’ “No Chill with Gilbert Arenas,” the former Patriots star said he would like to see the NFL make it a requirement for every stadium in the league to have a natural grass surface. However, he doesn’t think that will ever happen because be believes the league is prioritizing profits over player safety. 

“It’s money,” Edelman said in a clip provided to CBS Sports of why every stadium doesn’t have a grass field. “You put a turf field in, that’s [$1.5 million] for the year. If you have grass, you got to water it, upkeep it, redo it, there’s a lot of maintenance, you have to have a field crew that’s always on it. We’re counting pennies when it comes to what they’re actually making and you would think that the league would want to protect their investment in the players. The horses that race, you’ve got to take care of the horse.”

The former Super Bowl MVP suffered several major injuries in his career and he blames at least two of them on the fact that he was forced to play on field turf. 

“I tore my ACL on a shitty turf in Detroit, which was absolutely ridiculous,” Edelman said. “I broke my foot on a shitty turf field in New York. This is a multi-billion dollar corporation and we can’t get grass?”

Edelman’s ACL tear happened on a play where he went down without being contacted during the 2017 preseason. According to Edelman, once players start to get older, it becomes more difficult for their bodies to handle anything but natural grass. 

“With turf, there is nowhere for the energy to disperse, so when you cut, everything is going straight into the knee and ankle,” Edelman said. “When you’re a younger player, it’s awesome, because you can cheat a cut. You can cut off your inside foot and still make the cut. With grass, you’ll slip, but there’s no give. When you get to about 27 or 28, you go out and you have to practice on a turf field and your back locks up, your knees get hurt for the next three days, your ankles are sore for three days. It’s just, there’s nowhere for the energy to go, but through your body and these are full grown men who are cutting on this. It’s like playing on a hard court.”

One reason Edelman is upset with the NFL is because stadiums around the league regularly install natural grass for professional soccer games, but they won’t do it for NFL games. 

“Our stadiums, whenever there’s an international soccer game and if you have a turf stadium, they’ll bring in grass for the international teams to play because they have a rule for their players that they have to play on grass, but we can’t do it for our league,” Edelman said. 

The NFLPA definitely stands with Edelman on this issue. The player’s association told the NFL in April that studies have shown that natural grass is a ‘significantly safer surface.’ The NFL’s reply to that point is that there are no simple answers to the problem and that injuries happen on every surface. 

As for Edelman, he won three Super Bowl rings during his 12-year career and although he’s now retired, he’s doing his best to make sure the next crop of NFL stars doesn’t have to deal with the same issues that he had to deal with during his career.