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The middle of July has arrived, my [gulp] 40th birthday has passed, and that can only mean one thing.
Football. Is. Coming.
Seahawks rookies report to training camp today, 49ers rookies check into training camp on Saturday, and the NFL regular season will be kicking off before we know it!
This week’s mailbag is loaded with fascinating questions about the season ahead, as well as one pressing storyline when it comes to the league’s future, but first, a couple of quick Between The Hashmarks housekeeping notes …
You may have received an email Thursday, but Beehiiv just introduced communities, which has enabled us to launch the Between The Hashmarks Huddle, which will serve as a one-stop hub for all of our content. There, you’ll find a full-fledged social media feed you can comment and like posts on, every podcast episode dropping into the feed as it is released, a chat feature, every article we post, and you can even save the feed as an app on your phone in order to receive alerts and notifications when someone comments on your post or a new article drops.
Right now, it’s only for our paid subscribers, but I’d love to see you join the huddle and all the fun things we have planned for the space, including exclusive content from our upcoming training camp tour!
This is also a great time to become a paid subscriber, because as much of the Midwest and Northeastern United States are blanketed by smoke causing unhealthy air quality, I’m pledging 20% of the proceeds from each new paid subscription plan purchased through Monday to the Canadian Red Cross’s Wildfire Relief Fund.
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And now that that’s all out of the way, let’s get after it.
Inside this mailbag, we tackle your questions on the future of the grass fields FIFA had installed for the World Cup inside NFL stadiums, Dexter Lawrence’s potential impact on the Cincinnati Bengals’ defense, and Aaron Donald’s chances of rejoining the Rams and now Myles Garrett along the Rams’ front seven …
Will any of the World Cup Stadiums keep the grass that FIFA made them install this summer? ( gubbo.bsky.social)
The turf vs. grass debate has become a full-grown turf war between players, the NFLPA, and the league itself.
"If the fact that the World Cup won't play on turf doesn't tell you how little the NFL cares about players,” an NFL agent told me … back in 2023. “Then I don't know what will."
Tensions likely won’t be de-escalated by the rousing success of putting down grass pitches in indoor facilities such as AT&T Stadium, SoFi Stadium, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and places like Lumen Field, Gillette Stadium, and temporarily replacing the notorious MetLife Stadium turf.
"Can it be done? Yes. We know it's going to be done [at the World Cup]," Rams safety Quentin Lake said, via ESPN. "So I would hope that one day, maybe in the near future, they can do it for us."
This is, unsurprisingly, the prevailing sentiment among players, and one that I happen to agree with.
While it would take a massive financial undertaking by teams and owners to maintain grass in an indoor facility for longer than the two months that World Cup games were staged, the success of grass fields in climates such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Green Bay; leave few excuses for teams like the Patriots, Seahawks, and the Giants and Jets not to invest in grass surfaces for the benefit of their players even at the higher costs to maintain the natural fields and repair them after the myriad concerts and other events held at those stadiums.
The logistical concerns surrounding the money-generating machines that NFL stadiums have become outside of roughly 14 days per year seem to be the driving force behind not permanently putting down grass.
Just ask Jerry Jones, who was asked about the possibility of leaving the grass installed in Arlington, during the NFL Annual Meeting in Phoenix, this spring.
"No, we have more flexibility with the way we handle our surface at the stadium. We have no belief that it's any safer to play on a grass [field] or a turf. We are ambiguous as to the safety of it," Jones said. "The turf, actually like many things, improves the economics of being able to play this game and our players are the biggest beneficiaries of all. They get the best benefit of when we do good things financially, the players are benefiting. So I'm working for you, baby, OK, if you're a player.
"And so the combination of that, I'm very comfortable putting some grass down for soccer under regulations and proud to be able to do it but quickly get that turf back out there to go about the other business of the stadium and the team."
It’s unreasonable, and probably financially prohibitive, but the question the NFLPA, players, and fans should be asking is, why don’t owners treat these stadiums the way baseball teams treat their ballparks?
If Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are booking a summer stadium tour, the Philadelphia Phillies or New York Mets may allow them to schedule two concerts in July or August, but the Boss and his Telecaster aren’t stepping foot on that field in October.
According to Jones, if the Cowboys do have the kind of flexibility he suggests about what kind of surface to put down inside the stadium, why can’t teams put down a grass field from August through January (at best), and limit the concerts and large gatherings from booking the stadium during the throes of a football season?
NFL Players are insistent that research shows grass fields are safer; just ask former President JC Tretter.
“The data supports the anecdotes you’ll hear from me and other players: artificial turf is significantly harder on the body than grass,” Tretter wrote in a column posted on the union’s website. “Based on NFL injury data collected from 2012 to 2018, not only was the contact injury rate for lower extremities higher during practices and games held on artificial turf, NFL players consistently experienced a much higher rate of non-contact lower extremity injuries on turf compared to natural surfaces. Specifically, players have a 28% higher rate of non-contact lower extremity injuries when playing on artificial turf. Of those non-contact injuries, players have a 32% higher rate of non-contact knee injuries on turf and a staggering 69% higher rate of non-contact foot/ankle injuries on turf compared to grass.”
It shouldn't take an international soccer tournament to force an NFL owner to provide a safe workplace. The World Cup proved that growing indoor grass is a solvable engineering problem.
The data provided by the NFLPA isn't a suggestion; it’s a warning label.
By refusing to adapt the stadium technology that FIFA just bought and paid for on American soil, NFL owners are revealing their true hand … they aren’t managing a sports league; they are renting out concert halls that happen to host football on Sundays.
Until the league forces a baseline shift, player safety will remain a secondary metric to the summer stadium tour economy.
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What kind of impact do you see Dexter Lawrence making in Cincinnati? ( Matthew M Rice)
The Myles Garrett blockbuster obviously stole the headlines this offseason. Still, there might not be five moves that make more of a difference to the upside this season than the Bengals swooping in and acquiring Dexter Lawrence in exchange for the No. 10 overall pick in April’s NFL Draft.
“Dexter is a top-five interior defensive lineman in the league,” a defensive coach told Between The Hashmarks, shortly after Lawrence requested a trade this spring. “He’s a difference-maker.”
Lawrence’s reputation among coaches and players has been well-earned, dating back to 2021, when one veteran offensive lineman told me that even in just his third NFL season, the former Clemson standout was already the best player on the Giants’ roster.
Cincinnati desperately needed to upgrade its defense, or risk wasting the prime of one of the sport’s most gifted quarterbacks, after the Bengals allowed 28.9 points per game last season (third-worst in the NFL) and 25.5 per game in 2024.
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