As someone who was a landscaper for the better part of two decades, I can tell you all the crap you're hearing about the turf is bs. I'll tell you why....
Grass does not grow in winter. Period. Some of it may look green, and rye, which technically is a reed and not grass, will grow a little, but you can't exactly plant rye on a football field. It grows straight up in the air, and forms large, thick clusters at the base. To plant this would be severely damaging to anyone attempting to play on it.
Typically on any sports field, you have two options for grass. Bent grass, which would cost millions a year for an NFL field, and 419 Bermuda. Bermuda is a southern summer grass. In the winter, it looks like our field looked on Sunday. It's weak, it falls apart if you look at it wrong, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to it to make it better. The roots shrink and become too weak to hold it into the soil. So you step on it, it comes up.
People want to say sod it. That would be all fine and dandy, but sod has an extra problem. For starters, there are seems in sod, impossible to avoid. That gives an added thing to trip people up. It's like when you trip on the edge of an area rug at a store and nearly bust your ass trying not to fall. Also, sod has plastic mesh in it. Since this mesh is typically about half an inch under the surface, cleats could easily catch it, and pull it up. This would result in a player running down field full stride, and risking a cleat catching the mesh, and pretty much tearing their leg out of socket as their leg stopped but their body continued its course. Sod is fine to get the field going for the season, but redoing it during the season has the potential for disaster.
That being said, the grass sucks because it's DC and it's winter. Tough ****. There are a few things that could be done to improve the actual field though. They could install a heating system in the ground like they did in Green Bay. It would keep the roots warmer, and allow the grass to do a little better. But you would still have the elements to contend with. And running on it with cleats would still tear it apart. Lambeau actually has a synthetic fiber woven into the sod to further improve their situation there, so all the talk of "if they can grow grass in Lambeau, they can do it here" is bs. They aren't really doing it there, most of their "grass" isn't grass, it's a plastic composite material. An illusion.
They could also install several dry wells. The reason this would be beneficial, is because when it rained or snowed, FedEx wouldn't get so soggy. When a field gets soggy, even if it dries out, it will be in horrible shape for about a week or two this time of year.
So there are improvements that could be made. The problem is, they are extremely expensive, which would come back on the fans very heavily, jobs would be lost to a combination of cost cutting and need for less personnel to maintain it, and in the end, guess what? It would prevent practically nothing from happening. That's the catch-22. They could do all that, and surprise surprise, injuries are still going to happen, and they will still happen at the same rate and with the same severity.
Not only do most sports injuries occur on artificial turf, but they are almost always the most severe and lingering injuries as well, so anyone calling for the fake **** needs to carry their ass and get a clue.
The field did not hurt Griff. **** happens. Shannahan should have pulled him, but Griff should have known better too. You can't blame the ground. I've torn my ACL in both knees, and my MCL in my right knee. Three seperate injuries, not a one happened on grass. Once was on carpet, once on concrete, and once on my kitchen floor. It just plain happens.
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