For all the bone-crushing hits they endured on the gridiron, there’s one surface even NFL legends like Tom Brady won’t risk playing on: sand. A former New England Patriots linebacker, Tully Banta-Cain, revealed the key differences and why NFL legends stay away from Beach Football, a rising sport, while talking about how he founded the sport.

“I wanted to lead with it being a pro-level, you know, familiar named league where you got guys like a Terrell Owens or a Devin McCourty or a Tom Brady playing in the Beach Football League so that it would be taken seriously,” said Tully Banta-Cain. “But then I realized soon that it’s not easy to get guys to commit to playing tackle football with no pads on the beach post-retirement.”

For most NFL players, the end of their career comes after years of punishment that the body simply cannot ignore. Knees, shoulders, and concussions pile up over a decade in the league. That is why getting former pros back onto a football field is never easy.

Asking them to risk fresh aggravations, even in a casual setting like beach football without pads, becomes an even tougher sell. It explains why Tully Banta-Cain’s beach football rarely features large numbers of retired NFL players willing to suit up again.

The Patriots drafted Banta-Cain in 2003 in the seventh round. He left the franchise after the 2006 season and joined the 49ers. After a couple of seasons, he returned to New England before finally hanging up his cleats after the 2010 season. He is a two-time Super Bowl winner and a former teammate of Tom Brady.

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After retirement, he founded the Beach Football League (BFL) in 2024. BFL is an 8-on-8 tackle football that takes place on sand. While many have called it the “summer-version of the NFL,” it lacks the star power of the league.

In football, players use shoulder pads, knee pads, waist pads, and several other pieces of protective gear to protect themselves. But beach football does not include this equipment. Players who have spent their entire careers playing with certain equipment could also find themselves empty-handed without it.

Moreover, the ground is also a major factor. A turf is hard, and the players can have a proper footing. For someone like a quarterback or wide receiver, this requires a massive adjustment in how they generate power.

Early scrimmages involving former NFL players reportedly saw no injuries despite high-intensity play, offering an encouraging sign for the format. However, the softer surface brings its own challenges.

Without the firm stability of a traditional field, quarterbacks may have to generate extra power in their throws, while wide receivers could struggle to accelerate and cut sharply in the sand. The game may be safer in some ways, but it demands a completely different kind of athletic adjustment. Also, the BFL field is almost half (50 yards) of a football field.

Despite Banta-Cain pointing out the reason, other factors make it a safer version than gridiron football.

The BFL is mostly free of season-ending injuries

Despite its shortcomings, the BFL is a much safer sport than the NFL. Season-ending injuries and concussions are almost a regular thing in the NFL. But in beach football, such injuries rarely occur. That is all thanks to the sand.

“Sand is the safest surface, and that’s something that I think we really take as an advantage in playing in the BFL is that a lot of concussions do come from the head hitting the ground, not so much the collision above the ground…” said Tully Banta-Cain. “There’s more forgiveness in terms of your foot not getting stuck, and you get that ACL or you get that bad knee bend, you just really slide. So, not to say that you can’t get injured on sand, but the probability is lower, and in all of the 20-plus games that we’ve had so far, not one injury and not one head injury.”

While there are some cons to beach football, its biggest pro is perhaps the lower probability of injuries. Sand acts as a shock absorber. So, when the players fall, the impact is milder compared to the gridiron pitch. There are chances of getting cuts or bruises, but that is the most. It is, as Banta-Cain mentioned, that “the probability is lower.” Boasting no injuries in 20-plus games is a pretty impressive record for a body-contact sport.

The Beach Football League may still be in its early days, but the curiosity around it is real. Seeing former stars like Terrell Owens step onto the sand has already added credibility to the concept. Whether more big NFL names eventually follow remains uncertain. But if the league continues to prove it can deliver, the sand might just become an unexpected second arena for football after the turf.