Caleb Williams, NFL Players Advocate for Grass Fields Amid FIFA World Cup, '#WorthTheCost'

NFL stars including Caleb Williams and Cam Heyward joined players across the league Friday in a coordinated campaign to play on grass fields.

Dozens of players posted calls for NFL stadiums to replace turf fields with natural grass tagged with the NFL Players' Association-created slogan "#WorthTheCost."

The players' campaign comes after seven NFL venues temporarily replaced artificial turf fields with grass for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Out of the 30 NFL stadiums, 15 currently feature natural grass fields for football games.

Of the 15 stadiums that rely on turf fields, seven installed temporary natural grass fields for the World Cup.

Those venues host nine NFL teams including the Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, Atlanta Falcons, New York Jets, New York Giants, Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers, Houston Texans and Seattle Seahawks.

The NFLPA has been campaigning for years on the basis that players would prefer playing on natural grass.

The players' union renewed that campaign ahead of the start of the World Cup, at which point the NFLPA described the installation of temporary natural grass fields as "a choice by certain NFL team owners to do for soccer players what they refuse to do for NFL players."

The NFL has pushed back against NFLPA's campaign. The league announced in January the player injury rate was statistically similar on grass as it was on turf in 2025, per NFL.com's Judy Battista.

Another concern for the NFL is the flexibility of stadiums to host other events, including college football games, while still maintaining each field.

Hosting other events is part of the reason the Miami Dolphins' Hard Rock Stadium replaces its natural grass field as much as once per month, according to ESPN's Jordan Raanan.

The stadium achieves this by growing fields at a team-owned sod farm prior to installation, according to Raanan.

That could be more difficult for teams in harsher climates or with indoor stadiums. Technology to counter those factors could be costly, like the solution by Real Madrid's Bernabéu stadium to build a natural grass field that can be flipped underground into a greenhouse beneath the venue.

The current collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players runs through 2030. Depending on how much player support NFLPA can get behind the movement, the installation of grass fields could be an issue for the union to push for before the next CBA is ratified ahead of the 2031 season.