Kelly Stafford has spent nearly two decades watching her husband take hits for a living, and this week she used her platform to ask the NFL to change what players land on.

The wife of Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford posted two Instagram Stories on Wednesday. “GET RID OF TURF. PLEASE. Will it fix everything? No. Will it eliminate injuries? Absolutely not. But my goodness, wouldn’t it be a step in the right direction?” she wrote.

“You want your ‘stars’ to last in this league? The guys who bring in the viewers, fill the stadiums, sell the jerseys and make the league billions? Then why aren’t we doing EVERYTHING we can to protect them,” she asked.

Her main concern was head injuries. “Listen, I know what sport my husband plays. I know what these men signed up for. Football is physical. It’s violent. Heads are going to collide. Bodies are going to hit the ground. That part of the game isn’t going away,” she wrote.

"We can’t always control what these players hit. But we sure as hell can control what they land on. And if there’s a chance that changing the surface beneath them could reduce even ONE serious injury, shouldn’t we be doing everything possible to make that happen?”

She added that her family is not against football, writing, “I’ve watched what this game takes from these men. I’ve seen the injuries, the surgeries, the pain they play through, and the toll it can take on their head long after the final whistle. And I love this game. Our family loves this game. That’s exactly WHY I want it to be better.”

She called on the league to lead for the colleges, high schools and youth leagues that follow its example.

“You have the money. You have the resources. You have the ability to lead the way. No, grass isn’t going to solve every problem. But doing nothing because we can’t fix everything? That’s not good enough,” she wrote.

In 2024, Matthew Stafford hit his head on the floor at Ford Field, which has artificial turf, during a game against the Lions.

He looked dazed, staring up at the lights, and although he was cleared to return, neurologists unaffiliated with the NFL questioned that decision.

He has said the difference between turf and grass is “night and day” and has called out MetLife Stadium, where Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles in 2023.

“Grass to me is a must,” Stafford said on SiriusXM’s Let’s Go! podcast. “I wish we would get it done. Hopefully when I’m done playing, some of these younger guys will get to play on grass for the rest of their career.”

A 2023 NFL study of 1,096 diagnosed concussions from 2012 to 2019 estimated that concussion incidence was about 22 percent lower on grass than on turf, though other studies have been less conclusive. The NFL has maintained that injuries are split evenly between surfaces, while NFLPA data from 2012 to 2018 found at least a 69 percent higher rate of non-contact ankle and foot injuries on turf. A study published in August found that at least one in four NFL players who died over a five-year span had CTE.