Once upon a time, we’re told, NFL players were tougher. They played in cardboard-thin padding with helmets made of thin plastic and no facemasks. The stadiums were outdoors, and they ran 100 yards — uphill each way — in 20-degree weather.
And they liked it.
Quite a bit of this was, in fact, true. Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium, for instance, featured “grass” that was little more than painted, frozen dirt by November. (That’s part of the reason why the original Browns are now the Baltimore Ravens, by the way.) The joke artificial surface known as “Astroturf” made many a knee surgeon a millionaire.
Players’ careers were much shorter — and, once they were over, the men were riddled with innumerable injuries. This includes CTE: chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition caused by repeated brain injuries and responsible for mental illness and dementia-like symptoms.
So, no, the good ol’ days when NFL players were supposedly “tougher” were anything but good — which is why Friday night’s game in Sao Paolo, Brazil, was a travesty and may end up costing one of the league’s biggest talents a significant chunk of his season.
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In the final seconds of a 34-29 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love suffered an injury to his left leg that, to the untrained eye, appeared to involve his knee popping out of joint.
“On first-and-10 with 15 seconds remaining on the Packers’ 49-yard line, Love tried to buy extra time to find an open receiver, but he was hit low by Eagles DT Jalen Carter and edge rusher Josh Sweat up high as he fell awkwardly to the field,” USA Today reported.
“The quarterback stayed on the field in noticeable pain. Green Bay’s medical staff tended to Love for a few moments before he walked off the field with his arms around Jacobs and a team staffer.”
Not good, Jordan Love is down on the field with an injury. #GBvsPHI pic.twitter.com/zZ9O6kEn94
— Rate the Refs App (@Rate_the_Refs) September 7, 2024
If you’re squeamish, please do cover your eyes:
Looks like Jordan Love’s knee popped 😬 pic.twitter.com/xJs7Sf32xd
— NFL Notifications (@NFLNotify) September 7, 2024
I’m not a doctor, but here is the video of him on the sideline immediately after the injury pic.twitter.com/qK8Eg0w31E
— ashew “Jordan Love SZN” ➐ (@KashwrapSupreme) September 7, 2024
Now, it’s impossible to say what role the field played in Love’s injury or how bad it is. However, what’s clear is that, if there was ever any field that a player was likely to suffer an injury on this season, Neo Química Arena in Sao Paolo was definitely it.
The stadium, better known as Arena Corinthians, is home to the Corinthians soccer club, one of Brazil’s biggest. It’s also played host to World Cup and Olympic soccer matches. Which is great, but whoever was tending the surface — or chose a stadium with that surface to begin with — clearly didn’t know or care how American football is played, as evinced by the number of slips and botched plays due to poor footing:
The field conditions have been a problem in Brazil, with Packers and Eagles players slipping all over the place.
Here are consecutive plays on a Packers drive where their players slipped. 🏈😵💫🇧🇷 #NFL pic.twitter.com/qVhfOsdP44
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 7, 2024
Absolutely unacceptable for the NFL to repeatedly put its players in such a vulnerable position due to poor field quality. pic.twitter.com/wxXgLSckp0
— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) September 7, 2024
This was the NFL’s first game in Brazil — and, if this is what it’s going to look like in the future, quite possibly the last. While players seemed to get a better handle on the turf as the game went on, only Eagles RB Saquon Barkley really looked like he had it mastered, running for 109 yards and getting another 23 through the air.
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However, Barkley’s game has always relied upon solid footwork and body control behind the line of scrimmage followed by straight-line speed once he passes it, meaning he was perfect for exceptionally bad field conditions. Consider, for instance, this play:
Nice run Saquon, created something out of nothing
— Steve Palazzolo (@StevePalazzolo_) September 7, 2024
For everyone else, particularly receivers or mobile quarterbacks (cough cough Jordan Love cough) who have to rely on constant cuts and killer footwork, this was a nightmare.
Packers fans might not wake up from that nightmare for at least a few weeks, if not an entire season. (Unless, of course, they believe that second-stringer Malik Willis — whom even quarterback-deprived Tennessee Titans were willing to let go to Green Bay for only a seventh-round draft pick — is able to shed the draft bust label that’s been slapped on him since he fell to the third round in the 2022 NFL Draft and underperformed even those lowered expectations.)
You’d think this would be the first and last game in Brazil, given what happened. But, as fans pointed out, this is the NFL we’re talking about:
They don’t care. They want the money 💰
— The Bro Dad (@The_BroDad) September 7, 2024
NFL doesn’t care
— Derek Rasmussen (@derek_razz) September 7, 2024
After all, this is the league that’s been feeding football fans subpar Thursday night games since 2006 — matches that are usually horrid affairs because neither team has fully rested or prepared from the previous Sunday’s game and where the highlights, such as they are, usually involve Al Michaels remarking on how bad the on-field action is.
Why? Because there’s money there, the same way there is money in having teams play in Europe and then battle jet lag, the same way there is money in having them play on several artificial surfaces that players have called out for notably higher rates of injury than others. If there were enough money in it, NFL teams would still be playing on fields like the painted dirt of Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
They aren’t, of course, because injuries to players like Jordan Love — as well as the obviously unready nature of the field in Sao Paulo — cost way more to the league than whatever it managed to make via exposing the game to more fans in Brazil. Let’s hope this is a wake-up call.
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