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.
Darrell Green, the Hall of Fame cornerback who retired after a 20-year career with Washington in 2002, still wants to compete at the age of 66. And he thinks he can do it, in flag football.
On a weekend when a major flag football event in Los Angeles will feature big-name NFL players, Green will be a couple hours away in Chula Vista, participating in national team trials for USA Football. If he does well, he can earn a roster spot on Team USA at the flag football world championships in Germany this summer.
“I’m going to give it my best and I’ll walk away with my head up, either way,” Green said.
Callie Brownson, senior director of high performance and national teams for USA Football, says Green will be given a legitimate chance like all the others who qualified for the tryouts.
“Darrell qualified through our digital combine. He’s later in his career than the other trials participants, but his testing results were impressive,” Brownson told the Associated Press. “Our coaches and staff felt he deserved a closer look. . . . He’s a rare athlete who has stayed in shape and is ready to compete this week.”
It’s still unclear how the USA flag football team for the 2028 Summer Olympics will be chosen, and whether participating players will come from current NFL rosters, from the USA Football flag squad, or some combination of the two. Even if Green can make Team USA for this summer’s world championships, he’d be an extreme long shot to make the Olympics at age 68. But Green didn’t shy away from challenges in his NFL career, and he won’t start now.
The Commanders entered the offseason wanting to get Jayden Daniels another wide receiver alongside Terry McLaurin. That’s still on the list of priorities.
The first choice was apparently Colts wide receiver Alec Pierce, who re-signed with Indianapolis just before it became legal for teams to negotiate with free agents. According to John Keim of ESPN, a source said Pierce “absolutely” would have signed with the Commanders if he had reached free agency.
Realistically, however, if the Commanders were going to out-bid the Colts for Pierce, they would have made sure Pierce’s agent knew that before he re-signed with the Colts. Teams and agents talk all the time, and Pierce wouldn’t have signed with the Colts just before the start of the negotiating window unless he had a very good idea of what other offers would be out there once the window officially opened. So while the Commanders may have wanted Pierce, that doesn’t mean they would have gotten him, even if Pierce had waited long enough to let them make him an official offer.
With the Commanders still needing a No. 2 receiver to complement McLaurin, 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk would be an obvious choice. Daniels and Aiyuk are close friends and were teammates at Arizona State, and they’d love to play together again. Aiyuk is still under contract to the 49ers, but they have said they’ll move on from him this offseason. When the 49ers officially move him, Aiyuk would make a lot of sense in Washington.
The Commanders could also draft a wide receiver, and there are still veterans available in free agency Jauan Jennings, DeAndre Hopkins and Keenan Allen. It’s a position where the Commanders would still like to fill a need, even as free agency slows down.
Wide receiver Dyami Brown is back in Washington, but he thinks he’s a different player than he was in his last stint with the team.
Brown signed a one-year deal to join the Jaguars in free agency last March after spending his first four NFL seasons with the Commanders and returned to his previous team on a one-year deal that was officially announced on Thursday. During a press conference that followed the announcement, Brown was asked how he feels he’s grown over the last 12 months.
“Really just mentally,” Brown said. “I understand the game a little bit more than what I have in the past. I took the steps to learn from other people like Jakobi Meyers, [Brian Thomas Jr.] out there. I had some people that helped me around — even the quarterback [Trevor], just learning from him — that took the game into another level and different viewpoint for me.”
Brown didn’t light up the box score — 20 catches for 227 yards and a touchdown — in his 14 games with the Jaguars, but he closed out the 2024 season with 14 catches for 229 yards and a touchdown in Washington’s three playoff games. That came with Jayden Daniels throwing the passes and the Commanders would love to see Brown pick up where he left off with the quarterback.
The Commanders are keeping one of their key contributors around.
Washington announced on Thursday that the club has extended safety Jeremy Reaves’ contract through the 2027 season.
Reaves, 29, has effectively spent his entire career with Washington. While he entered the league as an undrafted free agent with the Eagles in 2018, he was waived by the organization during roster cuts and landed with Washington’s practice squad.
Since then, Reaves has appeared in 81 games with 19 starts for Washington over the last eight seasons. In 2025, Reaves appeared in all 17 games with eight starts, tallying 91 total tackles with five tackles for loss, seven passes defensed, and an interception.
Reaves was on the field for 62 percent of Washington’s defensive snaps and 55 percent of special teams snaps in 2025.
Reaves was a first-team All-Pro and was selected to the Pro Bowl as a special teams player in 2022.
