The new, incoming Seahawks owners now have one area to improve for Seattle’s Super Bowl-champion players.
Their field.
The NFL Players Association’s annual report card by its union members on their own teams is out from this past season. ESPN.com’s Kalyn Kahler obtained and published the results Thursday, two weeks after the league won an arbitration ruling prohibiting the union from publicly releasing the results itself as it had in the three previous years.
Overall, the Seahawks got an A from their players, with the fourth-best overall score in the 32-team league. The most heavily weighted categories are coaching and ownership. Seattle head coach Mike Macdonald got an A. His offensive coordinator, departed new Las Vegas Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak got an A. Defensive assistant Aden Durde got an A+. Owner Jody Allen rated an A, as did general manager John Schneider.
The only one of the 17 categories the Seahawks rated below a B+ was “Home Game Field.” Seahawks players rated Lumen Field’s artificial-grass surface as an F.
The players are waving a red flag on the type of field they play on. Will the person(s) who buy the Seahawks when the recently announced franchise sale closes, perhaps this fall or winter, see it?
“We just gotta fix our turf!” veteran safety Quandre Diggs posted on X/Twitter Thursday after the NFLPA report card got out.
This summer, the players are going to get an assist toward perhaps changing the FieldTurf CORE system Lumen Field had installed as new in March 2024.
For the second time in its 24-year history, Lumen Field is going to feature real grass. That’s going to be for the World Cup 2026 in downtown Seattle during soccer world championship in the United States, Canada and Mexico. FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, requires World Cup and all international championship matches be played on grass.
As part of Seattle’s bid that landed the World Cup, the Washington state legislature last year approved $19.4 million for Lumen Field stadium upgrades. Gov. Bob Ferguson signed the bill for the funding, most of which is for replacing the artificial turf in Lumen Field with stitched natural grass. The stitching will make it part real, part synthetic. The new grass requires new processes for irrigation, ventilation and grow lights.
For now, the grass is scheduled to be used only for World Cup games. The first World Cup match on the new grass is June 15, Belgium versus Egypt.
The only other time Lumen Field has featured real grass for an extended period of time was last summer, for the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup matches in Seattle. The pitch for that at Lumen Field last June and July was a temporary hybrid-grass pitch of ryegrass and bluegrass.
Then the Seahawks went back to playing on the artificial turf for their 2025 Super Bowl-championship season. And the players hated it. Again.
Would the Seahawks seek to keep the World Cup grass into this September for NFL games?
For a quarter century under the ownership of Paul Allen and, since his death in 2018, the Paul G. Allen Trust chaired by his sister Jody Allen, that answer has been: No real grass.
In fact, the Seahawks have never in their 50-season history had a real-grass home field. The Kingdome from 1976 through ‘99 then Husky Stadium at the University of Washington in 2000 and ‘01 (while Lumen Field was getting built) both had artificial turf.
Seahawks report card
The rest of the Seahawks’ report card from their players in voting taken late in the 2025 season is glowing.
Treatment of families: B+
Food/Dining Area: A-
Nutritionist/Dietician: A
Locker room: B+
Training room: A-
Training staff: A
Weight room: A-
Strength coaches: A
Position coaches: A-
Special-teams coordinator: A
Team travel: A- The Miami Dolphins got the highest overall grade in the NFLPA report card, for the third consecutive year.
The teams with the three worst overall grades: the Cleveland Browns, Arizona Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers.
Ironically, Steelers players ripped their playoff team for the having the NFL’s lowest-rated playing field “by a wide margin,” and that field in Pittsburgh is real grass. The Steelers share their stadium’s field with the University of Pittsburgh and area high schools.
Why NFL owners choose grass
Across the league, 15 of the 30 NFL stadiums have real-grass fields (the New York Giants and Jets share synthetic-turf MetLife Stadium, while the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers share fake-grass SoFi Stadium).
Many NFL owners prefer artificial playing surfaces in their stadiums for the reason they became NFL owners in the first place: Money. Those owners like the artificial grass because it is cheaper and easier to maintain year-round than real grass. Plus, it’s better and easier to hold more events outside of football over artificial surfaces such as concerts and motocross.
Having concerts and motocross over real-grass field means spending more money to repair and replace the playing surfaces more often. NFL owners love making far more than spending money.
At least that’s been true so far in Seattle.
New owners could arrive by the start of next season, or by the end of the calendar year. In its statement announcing the sale this month, the Paul G. Allen Estate wrote it expected the Seahawks’ sale “is estimated to continue through the 2026 offseason. NFL owners must then ratify a final purchase agreement.”
This week at the NFL scouting combine Schneider and Macdonald said Jody Allen has told them it’s “business as usual” for the football side throughout this offseason and preseason.
Schneider, Macdonald and the Seahawks are proceeding with re-signing their own free agents before the market opens March 9. Then the team will sign outside free agents. That process is full go this week at the combine this week. Schneider is meeting with representatives for pending free agents plus outside free agents this week in Indianapolis, to learn initial prices for the team to counter next week.
The draft is April 23-25, with rookie and veteran minicamps in the weeks after, plus offseason meetings, workouts and practices then training camp beginning in late July leading into the season.
During all that, Allen has told Schneider and Macdonald to proceed as if there was no sale pending, to go get another, back-to-back Super Bowl championship.
“I had a great talk with Jody the other night. And she’s like, ‘Let’s get it. Let’s go for it. Like: ‘Let’s rip it,’” Schneider said Tuesday at the combine. “And it’s just business as usual for us.
“Yeah, just business as usual. And all football.”
Does the GM expect Allen to still be his team chair he answers directly to when the 2026 season begins in September?
“I have no idea,” Schneider said.
