Despite getting whooped by Team USA’s flag football team in the Fanatics Flag Football Classic on Saturday, the NFL players who participated in the event apparently haven’t gained a newfound respect for the sport.
The Athletic’s Tim Graham reported that some of the league’s stars declared that flag football isn’t “real football” after getting a taste of the sport, which is coming to the Olympics for the first time in the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“Most of the NFL players didn’t know — or care to learn — IFAF rules before Thursday and Friday practices,” Graham reported. “That’s also when they learned how difficult it is to pull a flag, necessary to stop a hitch route from becoming a breakaway touchdown. A few pros privately noted after these sessions that they didn’t think flag football was real football, although none were willing to say so on the record.”
In a three-game tournament, Team USA dominated the pros by scores of 39-14 and 43-16 in the round-robin portion and 24-14 in the championship. The two teams of NFL players included stars like Tom Brady, Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow, Jayden Daniels, Saquon Barkley, Davante Adams, Odell Beckham Jr. and DeAndre Hopkins, and they still had no answers for their flag football counterparts.
After getting trounced on the field, Brady even declared that flag football rules should be modified to help NFL players adapt to the sport easier.
“I would love to see a little modification to some of the rules to bring a little more passing into it,” Brady said. “I think people really want to see those skill elements as well. Maybe thinking about different ways to marry a seven-on-seven version of the game versus a flag version, where it resembles a little bit more of football, might make it more exciting to watch every single day and get more people involved in it globally around the world.”
When some of Team USA’s flag football stars were informed of Brady’s comments, they rightfully laughed off the future Pro Football Hall of Famer.
“We’re doing (International Federation of American Football) rules, which is the Olympic rules,” Team USA coach Jorge Cascudo said. “So why would we change something that’s going to be in the Olympics just to favor that? … As horrible or as much as you don’t like them, those are the rules. They’re not changing them (for NFL players) or anyone.”
Hopefully, Saturday’s experience will serve as a wakeup call for NFL players who thought they would earn a spot on the Olympic roster without truly embracing flag football.
“They were taking it for granted at first until they stepped on the field and saw how different it was,” Team USA quarterback Darrell “Housh” Doucette said. “Some guys came up to us afterward and said, ‘Man, y’all were right. This isn’t what we thought it was going to be.’ Some of them didn’t know the rules and thought Tom Brady and all them quarterbacks was going to sit back there and dissect us apart.”
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