The game between Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens, in Week 3 of the regular season, will be the league's first in Rio de Janeiro. And the field has become one of the talking points in the week leading up to the matchup.
Not because the game is at risk of being cancelled. The NFL has kept the game on, and Nick Pappas, the league's director of grounds, said he was confident the surface would be in good condition on Sunday. He said the NFL had also put together a plan to minimise the effects of the recent weather conditions.
The question is a different one: why can a pitch that so often raises concerns in Brazilian football provide suitable conditions for an NFL game? The answer lies in the characteristics of the two sports, the demands placed on the field and the way the North American league prepares and monitors the surface for its games.
1. The Maracan hosts a huge number of games and gets almost no rest
The first point is the amount of use. The Maracana is managed by the consortium formed by Flamengo and Fluminense and has a very different routine from a conventional NFL stadium. The stadium's management expects more than 70 matches to be played there during 2026. By September, there have already been 58 games.
Maracana CEO Fred Nantes argued that comparisons with other stadiums need to take this difference in usage into account. The stadium sometimes hosts games just a short time apart, while American football venues normally stage far fewer games involving their main teams.
NFL teams play an eight or nine home games per regular season. And the competition window runs from August to early February, when the Super Bowl takes place. In other words, it is a short period compared with the packed calendar of Brazilian football.
At the Maracana, therefore, the pitch does not merely need to be ready for a one-off event. It has to survive an entire football season.
2. The oval ball and round ball do not make exactly the same demands
There is an apparent contradiction in the criticism. Footballers have complained about holes, unevenness and difficulty controlling the ball at the Maracana. Agustín Rossi and Arrascaeta, of Flamengo, were among the players to publicly criticise the condition of the field in recent weeks.
For the NFL, however, some of these problems are assessed differently. Nick Pappas explained that American football and football have different characteristics and that the American football spends less time in contact with the grass. That does not mean the organisers and franchise executives accept a poor field. Quite the opposite.
The league needs a safe, consistent surface for athletes who run, brake, change direction and absorb impacts at high speed. That is why the concern does not disappear; it simply involves different criteria from those used by a footballer when assessing the quality of a pitch.
3. The problem is not just the number of games: it is when they are played
The 2026 calendar has created a particularly difficult combination for the Maracana. The stadium has gone through weeks of heavy rain, precisely when pitch recovery was already being hindered by the number of matches.
Data presented by the stadium management showed that the proportion of games played in the rain or within 24 hours of rainfall rose from 20% in 2025 to 46% in 2026.
Humidity directly affects the grass's ability to be maintained and recover. Sunlight also plays an important role in the process. The stadium management and those responsible for the field have already pointed out that winter brings less favourable conditions for the growth of the so-called “Bermuda Celebration”, used at the Maracana since the 2014 World Cup, mainly because of issues involving shade, temperature and the recovery of the vegetation.
In other words, it is not simply a matter of “the Maracana hosts too many games”. It is a combination of many games, short intervals, rain, humidity and less favourable growing conditions for the grass.
4. The grass itself will be replaced
Perhaps this is the clearest indication that there is, in fact, a structural problem to be resolved. The Maracana announced that, after the Brasileirao, it will replace the current Bermuda Celebration with Celebration Hybrid. The new variety is considered more resistant and capable of recovering more quickly, as well as being more tolerant of cold, drought and shade.
The change, therefore, was not caused exclusively by the NFL's arrival. The problem already existed in Brazilian football and became more evident in 2026. Players and coaches had been criticising the field even before the Maracana was transformed to host the Cowboys and Ravens. The NFL is simply arriving at a particularly delicate moment.
5. What is the NFL doing with the field?
The league took over operations at the Maracana after the game between Flamengo and Red Bull Bragantino, played on September 20.
Since then, an NFL team has been working to prepare the stadium for the game. The league even brought in a cover to protect the pitch and planned specific interventions to turn the football field into a surface suitable for American football.
The adaptation is not limited to the lines. The Maracana needed structural changes, including work on the dressing rooms and support areas, as well as the installation of the goalposts and preparation of the field for the dimensions and safety areas required by the NFL.
The league's director of operations, Stephen Farago, explained that a larger runoff area was needed to meet American football specifications. The field is therefore undergoing a kind of transformation.
6. Is the NFL concerned or not?
This is the most curious part of the story. Despite all the attention surrounding the condition of the pitch in Brazil, the NFL does not currently regard the field as a reason to move the game elsewhere.
Nick Pappas said he had no reason to suspect that the game would not be played at the Maracana. The league has also stated that it has a plan to ensure a suitable surface.
From the Cowboys' side, Stephen Jones, the Texas franchise's co-owner, executive vice-president, CEO and director of player personnel, also said he was not concerned because the league had indicated that all preparations for the game were being accelerated.
That does not mean the pitch is perfect. It means the NFL believes it can work with the current conditions and deliver a safe surface for the game.
7. The strange part is the difference in perspective
For anyone who follows Brazilian football, looking at the Maracana pitch and hearing players complain is enough to conclude that there is a problem.
For the NFL, the assessment is more specific. The league knows it is arriving at a heavily used stadium during a period of above-average rainfall, with a natural-grass pitch that had already been questioned. At the same time, it has a specialised team, several days to prepare and its own criteria for determining whether the surface is fit to host the game.
That is why the Maracana pitch is less a story about “the NFL versus the Maracana” and more a story about two sporting models that need to come together on the same field.
On one side, there is a stadium that can host more than 70 games in a year and must meet the needs of Flamengo, Fluminense and other competitions. On the other, there is a league arriving in Rio with its own operation and demanding a suitable surface for athletes who play a different sport.
The outcome of this experiment will be known on Sunday, and Flashscore will be there to follow it all closely.