NFL’s Top Stars Embarassed?: Pat McAfee Reflects on Big Names Getting Humbled in Flag Football

From Tom Brady’s budding rivalry with Logan Paul to Joe Burrow’s on-field struggles, the inaugural edition of Fanatic’s Flag Football Classic certainly delivered plenty of headlines this past weekend. But none of them proved to be more telling than the scoreboards themselves.

Team USA managed to dust both the Wildcats and the Founders, whose rosters were full of NFL stars, validating both their captain, Darrell Doucette, and his assertion that “This is our sport.”

After Team USA outscored the opposition 106-44, many in the press have begun to wonder if the event serves as a bit of a black eye for the NFL. After all, the league’s most recognizable names lost to a bunch of semi-pros at best in a game that is fashioned similarly to theirs.

“The boys were bamboozled,” Pat McAfee suggested during his latest broadcast. In the games, many NFL players, and Brady too, were found to be a step or two slower than the Team USA athletes.

“I don’t think the NFL guys, retired or currently playing, had any idea that these guys had the whoop-de-whoop moves,” McAfee joked.

“Did the boys know that that was who they were playing?… Did Joe Burrow know that he was going to be playing against the greatest flag football team of all time? These flaggers knew that they would cook these NFL guys,” added McAfee.

Team USA players would have felt slighted by both the NFL and the public’s assertion that professional footballers should be the ones to represent the nation when the sport is introduced to the Olympics in 2028. McAfee suggested that there should be a strong sense of “I told you so” emanating from Team USA today.

However, he is still willing to maintain his hunch that NFL players weren’t fully aware of what they had signed up for. “Did all the boys know that they were running into a juggernaut of flag football talent?” questioned McAfee. “I don’t think they did. And if they agreed to put that on TV… I’m just confused by it all.”

And even Brady had to admit that he’s now as confident as ever that the U.S. will be taking home the gold in 2028. “I feel like Team USA flag football is in a good spot… I think these guys are good,” he said.

Perhaps that’s all that Team USA wanted from the beginning: Their due recognition. Of course, they may still be a bit annoyed that it required such an outing to prove their point in the first place.