The physicality of the NFL, once a celebrated aspect of the game, is slowly but surely being legislated out. It’s already been completely removed from Pro Bowl weekend, where the league’s best players now compete in a 7-on-7 flag football game instead of a traditional padded 11-on-11 matchup. That means NFL players are becoming more familiar with flag.
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And right on time. The 2028 Summer Olympics will be held in L.A., and flag football has been added to the list of events. Considering the U.S. is basically the only country with a major interest in American football (in the rest of the world, football means soccer, which does make more sense), they will want to dominate that sport.
To that end, they have already started getting a team together. On Monday, Team USA announced they had added a dozen players to the country’s National Men’s Flag Football team. NFL players are not yet eligible to make the cut, so as you might expect, the list was a bunch of no-name former college players and athletes. If you recognize one of these names, you’re a college football junkie for sure.
“DB/WR Aamir Brown; WR/DB Velton Brown Jr.; DB/WR Isaiah Calhoun; QB Nico Casares; DB/WR Mike Daniels; WR/Rush Laval Davis; WR/DB Tyler Davis; QB/ATH Darrell “Housh” Doucette III; WR/DB Ja’Deion High; DB/WR Jamie Kennedy; WR/QB Laderrick “Pablo” Smith; Rush/WR Shawn Theard Jr.”
These players have been called in to participate in the 2025 IFAF Americas Continental Flag Football Championship in Panama in September. Their preparations for the tournament will begin in earnest this June, according to PFT’s Mike Florio.
“The 2025 team will gather in June for USA Football’s International Bowl, which is a ‘series of exhibitions between the U.S. and teams representing Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel and Japan.’ Then, training camp will commence in July for the September competition.”
Now the big question remains: How long until we know whether or not NFL players will be allowed to try out for the 2028 Olympic team?
Owners will soon vote on Olympic participation for NFL players
Well, the answer is: not very long.
It has yet to be decided if the NFL will allow its players to participate in the national flag football team at the Olympics. As American football players, these guys probably never dreamed they would be able to represent their country at the Olympics. So this is a big deal.
Luckily, the owners are voting on a resolution this week that concerns the Olympics and flag football. The resolution focuses on whether or not NFL players can simply try out for the team, but says nothing of the intensity or duration of those try-outs. The resolution would also ensure that the Olympic schedule would not “unreasonably conflict with an NFL player’s League and club commitments.”
This raises a whole new host of questions.
Who would be the best NFL flag football players? Will the players want to add to their offseason schedule by participating? Would NFL players unfamiliar with the flag game even perform better than the veteran flag footballers already selected?
Would NFL players automatically slot in ahead of the non-NFL guys currently on the team? And how would that work for an NFL player’s offseason schedule with his team? Would missing OTAs or minicamp count as an “unreasonable conflict”?
Whatever the answers to those questions, the resolution is likely to pass because it fits into commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s agenda for growing the game globally. And what better way to market the league than with the best of the best showing it off in a dominant Olympic win—even if it’s in a watered-down form?
The players currently on the team should definitely get a fair shot to hold their spots ahead of NFLers. Though with the star power and physical prowess of these elite athletes, that might be too tall an order if the resolution passes. For now, we wait and see.
