Brazil is already famous for hosting the greatest games of soccer, attracting fans from around the world, and with such a reputation, the NFL also wants to get its hands on that international market. But the Week 3 matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and the Baltimore Ravens has been marred by poor field conditions, and the NFLPA has stood up for the players amid the league giving the green light earlier.

“There have been a lot of questions about the field surface in Brazil, and I wanted to provide the NFLPA’s perspective,” NFLPA executive director JC Tretter weighed in on the issue on X. “Our number one priority is the health and safety of our players. The concern heading into this week was that the field would be loose, patchy, and lead to excessive slipping. Those conditions are generally more of a playability and performance issue than a significant injury concern.”

This comes after an NFL spokesperson earlier spoke of the league looking forward to the game. The Cowboys and Ravens are set to play at Maracanã Stadium this Sunday. However, the earlier complaints from the country’s most popular domestic soccer club have been heard by the NFLPA and are too significant to ignore. The NFLPA is now standing up for player safety and the league’s quality standards.

“You don’t even need to talk about the field; it’s there for everyone to see,” goalkeeper Agustin Rossi of Clube de Regatas do Flamengo said. “The way we play, it’s unbelievable that we’re playing on a field like this. Both penalty areas are bad as [expletive]. If you look at it, there are bumps everywhere. There’s still going to be an NFL game here during the international break. After that game, I hope the field is in better shape.”

This is a huge issue, considering some of these players have played at this stadium for a decade and know the ins and outs of the quality usually presented, but it was so dreadful for a regular domestic game between Flamengo and Red Bull Bragantino that they had to call it out. He wasn’t the only Flamengo player raising concerns about the pitch, as midfielder Giorgian De Arrascaeta doubled down on Rossi’s statement.

“We’ve been struggling a lot in these last few games, and the field keeps getting worse,” Arrascaeta said. “It’s getting harder and harder to control the ball. We have to try to play quickly. If we want to be champions, we have to find a solution. With the team we have, we can’t be playing on a field like this.”

Now that the field has incurred more damage after this game, things don’t look good, with the Cowboys owner and general manager, Jerry Jones, addressing the field-related problems as well.

“That detail I’m not up to date on,” Jerry said after Week 2 win. “I was asked about it before the game, and I don’t know any more about it than I did then. We’ll look at that, and I know it’s the utmost concern to the league and the teams playing down there. We’ll obviously stay informed as we look to it and it’s front of mind now that we’ve gotten past the Washington Commanders.”

The Cowboys did send a team earlier to inspect the field’s conditions. While Jones seemed concerned about the dipping quality of the field, head coach Brian Schottenheimer said he had “no concerns” and maintained an optimistic outlook.

“I have no doubts that the field’s going to be in great shape,” Schottenheimer said from Rio de Janeiro on Friday, “and I know they’re working tirelessly to make sure it is, and we have other plans if we need people, but our guys will be ready.”

Statements like these have been heard before; the problem with Brazil not being an optimal location to host NFL games is not new.

NFLPA has raised questions over Brazil’s track record of poor international game quality to the league

Brazil is certainly not a random country that the NFL chose to host an international game, especially when this season is the biggest effort of commissioner Roger Goodell to push the expansion of the league’s global footprint. Brazil holds more than 36 million fans of the league according to Forbes’ last year’s statistics, making it the second-largest international market for the league.

But this doesn’t obscure the fact that the playing conditions haven’t been up to par for the players, raising further injury concerns. Tretter has highlighted this, saying that the league “can’t have frozen fields that create unnecessary risks.” Tretter later addressed the ongoing Brazil problem as well.

“Second, this reinforces one of our concerns about international expansion,” Tretter continued. “Two of the three games played in Brazil have had field-related issues. That’s not a coincidence. This time of year makes it extremely challenging to maintain the kind of grass surface we expect at the NFL level.”

This brings an old trip to Brazil into attention, when the Philadelphia Eagles’ 34-29 win over the Green Bay Packers at São Paulo’s Arena Corinthians Stadium in September 2024 wasn’t the highlight, but the patchy field was. While star running back Saquon Barkley had to switch to seven-stud cleats for better grip, quarterback Jalen Hurts was skeptical of the field, too.

“I mean, y’all saw out there that it was kind of rough to get traction,” Hurts said. “Definitely challenging on that field. It’s not the type of field we’re used to playing on. We’ve had that type of field before. They had to play on it as well. I’m just happy that we found a way to figure it out as a team, overcome it.”

Now that the game is almost here, what the Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes once said about Rio and the NFL being a “perfect match,” is turning out to be troublesome again. But seeing how the Australia game between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco went, with the game having 21.7 million viewers worldwide on Netflix, the NFL would not want to miss the chance to gain fans via this game as well.

For now, the league has no intention of shifting the game to another venue, with the Cowboys and Ravens already having landed in Brazil.