As an avid Philadelphia Eagles fan this story hit at the fan base soul as DeMeco Ryans was a defensive staple on our roster starting in 2012. Twice DeMeco led the Eagles in tackling during his tenure there.

Now the former star linebacker is suing the Houston Texans and the NFL due to the unsafe and choppy field conditions which caused a career ending tear to his Achilles heel.

Drafted by the Houston Texans with the 33rd pick in 2006 out of the University of Alabama. He finished second in the league in tackles that season with 155 which earned him NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.

Ryans tore his Achilles heel while playing the team that drafted him at NRG Stadium on November 3rd, 2014.  An injury he could never recover from.  He was released by Philadelphia in February of 2016, thus ending his 10 year NFL career which consisted of 939 tackles, 13.5 sacks, and 7 interceptions.

Ryans estimates in his lawsuit that if not for the injury he would have played in the NFL for another five years and made at least $10 million in that span.

He sued the NFL, Houston NFL Holdings LP dba Houston Texans, the stadium owner Harris County Convention & Sports Corp., and the stadium manager SMG, on Oct. 14 in Harris County Court.

He also sued StrathAyr Turf Systems Pty Ltd., an Australian company that made the turf Ryans blames for ending his career, and says that turf also took its toll on other elite NFL players possibly cutting their careers shorter than anticipated.

While playing for the Texans Ryans says, other teams’ coaches and players frequently complained about the StrathAyr turf at NRG Stadium: squares of grass grown in trays on a substrate of sand, peat, moss, and mesh wire, and a plastic-and-steel drainage base.

The turf pieces were stored in stacks and transported by forklift to the field before games, so some of pieces were more compacted than others. “These factors caused a lack of uniformity and with years of installations, the modules did not fit together tightly or in a uniform way that created seams, holes and other gaps in the turf surface,” the complaint states.

New England Patriots receiver Wes Welker tore his knee during a game against the Texans in January 2010, the Patriots’  coach Bill Belichick know for being outspoken and matter of fact, spoke about the playing surface.

“The turf down there is terrible. It’s terrible. It’s just inconsistent. It’s all the little trays of grass and some of them are soft and some of them are firm and they don’t all fit well together. … Some of it feels like a sponge, some of [it] feels real firm and hard like the Miami surface. One step you’re on one, the other step you’re on another. I really think it’s one of the worst fields I’ve seen,” Belichick said, according to the lawsuit.

The Texans have since replaced the turf with an artificial turf made by UBU Sports.

Source: Courthouse News Service