Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, is seeing some changes this offseason. The franchise will tear up the grass field and replace it with a synthetic surface before the start of the 2023 NFL season. The team has already started making the change.
The switch comes after the Titans reviewed injury rates along with understanding the difficulty of growing grass at the stadium. Nissan Stadium has had more players suffer lower-body injuries than at other stadiums with monofilament, synthetic turf fields.
"Ultimately there's just a limit to how much can be done for a natural grass surface in this part of the country," said team president and CEO Burke Nihill said (via NFL.com). "This turf is cutting-edge technology and will be a huge improvement in terms of consistency and performance."
The Titans have suffered a significant amount of injuries and had the most players used (91) in 2021 in a non-strike season. The new surface is a key approach to decrease this number. Titans head coach Mike Vrabel was one person who commented on the field, saying even when new sod was put in, players were slipping.
"Just witnessing our practices inside and how they feel and how they respond on that product," Vrabel said. "We're excited to be able to add this product to our stadium."
Nissan Stadium will become the first stadium in the league to use technology that features a "monofilament, Matrix Helix turf with an organic infill that retains moisture better than synthetic fields using rubber." This surface is also used at their practice field as of last year.
