The American national flag football team has traditionally been made up of players who never played tackle football at a high level. Now there’s an exception: Robert Griffin III.
Griffin, the 2011 Heisman Trophy winner and 2012 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, was named today to the Team USA Football men’s flag national team.
The 36-year-old Griffin was among 24 players named to the team today. Those players will attend a training camp before 12 are chosen to travel to the International Federation of American Football Flag Football World Championship in Dusseldorf, Germany, in August.
NFL players found out the hard way that flag football is a lot different than tackle football when two teams with active NFL players on them got blown out by Team USA at the Fanatics Flag Football Classic. With flag football coming to the Olympics in 2028, several NFL players have said they want to play, but they’re going to need a lot of practice to get good enough at flag football to beat the players who have been playing it for years.
Griffin, who hasn’t played in the NFL since 2020, may have the time to commit to learning the skills and techniques of flag football, and that may give him a better chance than active NFL players who won’t make that kind of time commitment. But even Griffin would seem to be a long shot, as flag football is a different sport, and a sport that the tackle players struggled to play at a high level when given the opportunity.
Flag football has a long way to go to match the appeal of tackle football.
Beyond the fact that the stands at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles were far from filled (then again, the event was hastily relocated from Saudi Arabia), the national broadcast on Fox generated an audience, on average, of 650,000 viewers, via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal.
The telecast peaked at 909,000.
The four-game flag football tournament competed with the second round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
The flag football event did well on social media, with (per SBJ) a global audience of 300 million. (It’s unclear how that number was determined.)
And, frankly, the involvement of the U.S. men’s national flag football team made the event far more compelling. They were added when it was moved from Riyadh to L.A. It creates many interesting storylines, to which PFT readers responded.
Still, as the NFL hopes to leverage flag football into expanded international interest in the sport, there’s plenty of work to be done to get the domestic audience to engage. Maybe that means, as Tom Brady has suggested, tweaking the rules to make flag football look more like football football.
Saturday’s inaugural Fanatics Flag Football Classic opened plenty of eyes regarding the fundamental differences between tackle football and flag football. And it raises interesting questions about how USA Football will determine the players on the U.S. men’s national flag football team for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Scott Hallenbeck, the CEO and executive director of USA Football, has provided some information as to the pending task of narrowing the various interested players to a final roster that will seek, and likely win, gold medals.
“For the Olympics in 2028, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) must approve our process,” Hallenbeck said via email to PFT. “USA Football is currently building the selection procedures for 2028 — a process that would involve select NFL players as well as the best of the elite flag players, like what all saw on display in Los Angeles on Saturday. Additionally, we will be seeking to identify and invite athletes from other sports — what is referred to in the Olympic movement as ‘talent transfer.’ For example, we’ve seen several athletes from basketball and track and field be successful in that transition.
“Within this process, we’re working with the NFL to determine how best to incorporate active NFL players — how they qualify for selection, ultimately how they’re selected and so forth. You may have seen some mention of ‘acclimation camps’ previously and essentially, we’re working to develop opportunities throughout 2027 for NFL players to have the chance to immerse themselves in the flag discipline, so they better understand the strategy, rules, nuance and skillset required for international flag football.”
As Saturday’s event showed, acclimation of NFL players will be critical. Beyond selecting players with the ideal body type and skill sets (nickel corners, receivers, scatbacks, mobile quarterbacks), they’ll need to be ready to compete within the confines of the unique rules of flag football.
“Overall, our selection process would likely include a combination of NFL players, flag specialists, and talent transfer athletes,” Hallenbeck said. “Of note, we anticipate sharing shortly an interest form with active NFL players that provides some information on the acclimation camp process, the LA28 training camp and competition dates, etc. to get a better understanding of which NFL players would like to commit to going through our process to be considered for LA28.”
That’s an important step. It’s one thing to be interested in showing up for the Olympics. It’s quite another to commit to the full and complete process for making the team and preparing for the competition.
For now, USA Football must first devise the selection procedures. Hallenbeck said that USA Football currently anticipates that the process will be “approved and announced by Q4 of 2026.”
While there’s still plenty of time to figure it out, the clock is ticking. And the overriding question is whether the team will eventually be hand picked or whether the candidates will need to devote some of their down time in the offseason to participating in the various pre-Olympics camps in an effort to win a spot on the team — and whether any of those events will conflict with offseason workouts.
Last year, the NFL approved allowing one player per team to participate in the Olympics. Team USA may have up to 10. Other players could qualify for the other teams in the tournament, based on the usual rules that allow participation on behalf of a given country.
Regardless, the supply of willing NFL players will likely outweigh the available slots. And with only one player per NFL team permitted, someone will have to determine which player on a given franchise gets the assignment, if multiple players want it.
Tom Brady’s first taste of flag football didn’t go well, with his hand-picked team of current and former NFL players (for the most part) going 0-2 in the inaugural Fanatics Flag Football Classic. Coincidentally, or not, Brady explained after the event that he’d like to see the rules of flag football change.
“I think maybe about different ways to marry a 7-on-7 version of the game versus a flag version where it resembles a little bit more football, might make it more exciting to watch every single day, and get more people involved in it, kind of globally around the world,” Brady said.
It became immediately clear on Saturday that, in flag football, the quarterback does more than throw passes. He runs routes. He advances the ball. He needs to be agile, shifty, fast.
As a result, Brady wants “to bring a little more passing into” flag football.
Brady also floated a concept that would prevent a repeat of Team USA running roughshod over their tackle-football contemporaries in the 2027 Fanatics Flag Football Classic.
“I think, you know, even on the sideline, just thinking about maybe an NFC team next year versus an AFC team, and then kind of sprinkle in some of the great, you know, American flag players,” Brady said. “I think that could really help.”
The undercurrent is obvious. The NFL players believe (accurately) that they have much greater overall ability than the flag players. And while the easiest fix is to pick NFL players with the right skills to thrive in flag football (nickel corners, receivers, scatbacks), adjusting the rules to make the whole thing look more like real football and less like the product of a P.E. teacher’s fever dream will make it easier for fans of tackle football to accept, or at least tolerate, flag football.
If the NFL’s goal is to use flag football as a way to introduce the game not only to global participants but also to global spectators, there’s merit in the notion of making flag football look more like football football.
Ideally, the International Federation of American Football will move quickly to incorporate those changes before the 2028 Olympics. That will be the true coming-out party for flag football.
The format and the rules to be used then will, in theory, become the foundation for the version of flag football that will spread throughout the world in a way that more closely simulates the 11-on-11 version of the sport.
Flag football is still football. Even without contact, a risk of injury remains.
And it was clear on Saturday that, for the active NFL quarterbacks in the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, there was much more activity than target practice in seven-on-seven drills.
Watch this clip of the things Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was doing. Cutting, spinning, falling, diving. Ditto for Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels.
Grant Paulsen of 106.7 The Fan in D.C. had this to say during the games: “Jayden Daniels is playing receiver, running routes, juking guys. [Team USA] is playing like it’s an NFL playoff game. Biggest day of their careers. There have been collisions. I just can’t believe the Commanders are cool with this.”
There was, at one point, a vague sense that Daniels was hoping the team would tell him not to do it — and that the team was hoping Daniels would decide not to do it. The all-important third year of his career to date is coming, and any injury would have complicated his effort to fully prepare for the football season to come.
In the end, and as far as we know, none of the active NFL players were injured. Former Patriots and Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski pulled a hamstring after catching a pass for a two-point conversion on the first drive of his team’s first game. For active players, a hamstring injury could mean weeks of rest and rehab, with the offseason program coming very soon.
So, yes, there’s a risk. It’ll be there during next year’s Fanatics Flag Football Classic. It’ll be there if/when USA Football decides to hold a competition to determine the participants in the U.S. men’s national team for the 2028 Olympics. It’ll be there for the Olympics, which will happen days before the opening of training camps.
The NFL seems to be willing to accept that risk in pursuit of the reward that comes from further globalizing the game. The individual teams are going along with it, with silent reluctance. The players, for the most part, don’t think about injuries until they happen.
Still, the risk is there. And quarterbacks, as we saw on Saturday, are far more involved in flag football than standing behind the action and throwing passes.
On Saturday, the U.S. men’s national flag football team gave current and former NFL players a crash course in the no-touchy version of the game. And while it resulted in a 3-0 day for the guys who play flag football on a regular basis, the experience opened the eyes of the NFL players in advance of USA Football’s eventual effort to select the members of the 2028 U.S. men’s Olympic team.
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow got enough of a taste of the game to want to play in the Olympics, when the surprisingly sparse and subdued crowd at BMO Stadium in L.A. will be replaced with a packed house of raucous fans.
The offensive side of the ball isn’t the biggest problem for the men who play tackle football — except when it comes to the temptation for players like Saquon Barkley to run over those who are trying to grab his flag. Defense is the issue.
It became instantly obvious, from the first possession of Team USA, that NFL players need plenty of work on the art of grabbing flags. But if anyone can figure that out with (as the cool kids say) “time on task,” it’s the elite athletes who have made it to the highest rung of the football ladder.
The separate issue on Saturday became the composition of the players who volunteered (for the appropriate fee) to participate. It started as a boondoggle to Saudi Arabia, with all three teams made up of big-name players. When the event relocated to Los Angeles, the vibe shifted from a trio of high-priced beer-league teams to Rocky vs. Thunderlips.
By then, it was too late to select NFL players based on the skills and abilities best suited to competing with Team USA: Cornerbacks (not safeties or linebackers), receivers (not tight ends), and scatbacks (not bulldozers). And the quarterbacks also need to be shifty and agile and quick, because it takes more than just throwing passes in five-on-five flag football.
Saturday’s event complicates, in the short term, the efforts of USA Football to select the 2028 Olympic team. Next year’s Fanatics Flag Football Classic could, in theory, become part of that process.
Either way, the powers-that-be need to use more strategery and less starf—kery when picking the participants for the 2027 flag event from the ranks of current and former NFL players.
Cornerbacks, receivers, scatbacks. No boxers or YouTubers or Logan Pauls.
In the end, Saturday was simply Round One of Rocky vs. Thunderlips. The Wildcats, by the second time they played Team USA, had a chance to win. By March 2027, Rocky Balboa will be ready to power slam Hulk “Housh” Hogan.
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow wants to be an Olympian.
Flag football will be an Olympic sport for the first time in Los Angeles in 2028, and Burrow says that as soon as the Olympics made that decision, he was intrigued by the idea of being an Olympian.
“I’ve always wanted to play in the Olympics,” Burrow said, via the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I’ve never necessarily played an Olympic sport before, so when this got announced, I was pretty excited about it.”
Burrow said he grew up loving the Olympics, and for the first time in his life, participating in it seems like a realistic possibility.
“The opportunity to win a gold medal [is] something that I’ve thought about - a moment like that - for a long time, since I was a kid. I think it would be something very special,” Burrow said.
It’s unclear, however, whether NFL players will make the U.S. Olympic team in 2028. At Saturday’s Fanatics Flag Football Classic, Burrow and his fellow NFL players were unable to compete on the same level as the flag football players who have been playing and practicing the flag game for years. NFL players are superior athletes, but flag football is a different sport that requires different skills, and if the U.S. wants to win the gold medal — and not just use the Olympics to promote the NFL to a global audience — it may be experienced flag players, not NFL players, representing Team USA.
Rob Gronkowski’s day of flag football is apparently over.
After catching a two-point conversion from former teammate Tom Brady to cap the opening drive for the Founders against the U.S. men’s national team, Gronk pulled a hamstring while getting up.
He later said in an interview with the Fox broadcast that he’s done for the day.
Gronk caught multiple passes on the scoring drive.
The Founders will now have to get it done without him. And even though Gronkowski currently isn’t on loan from an NFL team, it’s a reminder that the active NFL players have assumed the risk of an injury that can throw a wrench into their offseason training.
Odell Beckham Jr. last played in an NFL game on December 8, 2024. He’s still hoping to return.
In advance of Saturday’s inaugural Fanatics Flag Football Classic, Beckham said he hopes the event will be the springboard for another NFL opportunity.
“Looking forward to hopefully getting an opportunity to play this year, and hopefully, this is kinda just a starting point,” Beckham told Kay Adams in an interview, via USA Today.
Beckham added that he’d welcome the possibility to return to the Giants.
During the opening game against the U.S. men’s national team, Beckham made an impressive one-handed catch of the smaller-than-regulation ball in the end zone for a two-point conversion.
A first-round pick of the Giants in 2014, Beckham has played for the Browns, Rams, Ravens, and Dolphins. He has five 1,000-yard seasons, and he was a two-time Pro Bowler.
No team has shown serious interest in Beckham since the Dolphins released him late in the 2024 season.
Flag football is very different from tackle football. And the current and former NFL players facing the U.S. men’s national flag football team are learning that.
The first half of the game between the U.S. team and the Wildcats (captained by Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels) did not go well for the pro players. The first drive by the Wildcats failed to result in a first down. The U.S. team went right down the field, with the NFL players struggling to master the skill of grabbing flags.
The opening drive by the U.S. team included multiple penalties against the Wildcats for excessive contact. After quarterback Darrell “Housh” Doucette III scored a touchdown on a running play (which included another penalty for illegal contact), Doucette chirped at non-football player Logan Paul. Paul removed Doucette’s sunglasses and threw them, drawing another foul.
Then came a pick six of Burrow, two plays later.
The Wildcats finally woke up, with a long touchdown pass by Burrow to DeAndre Hopkins, who easily boxed out the defender caught the undersized ball with one hand.
The U.S. team scored on the next drive, pushing the score to 19-6 after one half.
While the NFL players are generally bigger and faster and stronger (that said, Doucette seems to be able to weave through and around them), the tackle football players are clearly out of their element. If NFL playershope to represent the U.S. in the 2028 Olympics, they’ll need time to learn the game, and to figure out the rules. Which will take more than a casual commitment.
