PITTSBURGH 鈥 Please do this before you form an opinion on NFL players playing flag football at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (something NFL owners voted unanimously in favor of Tuesday): Go to YouTube and find last year鈥檚 world championship final between the United States and Austria, then decide if it鈥檚 a good idea to sic Lamar Jackson, Justin Jefferson, T.J. Watt and Tyreek Hill on these dudes.
The U.S. won, 51-23, even though its roster is not stocked with elite professional athletes. The Austrian squad looked like a pickup basketball team at your local YMCA, and not a particularly good one. They played defense like the Steelers in a playoff game.
They looked like the guys who wear knee braces and take charges in playground basketball games. If that鈥檚 the second-best team in the world, and if the NFL has even a few guys on the U.S. squad, I fear we鈥檙e talking scores of 200-0. We鈥檙e talking about a game that would make the 1992 Dream Team vs. Angola look like a squeaker (that one wound up U.S. 114, Angola 48).
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It would not be fun.
Tyreek Hill of the Miami Dolphins and AFC runs the ball for a touchdown during the first quarter of the 2024 NFL Pro Bowl Games at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Fla.
Combine the competitive imbalance with the obvious injury risk, and it鈥檚 hard to see where the NFL would look good here. If you watch the U.S.-Austria game, you鈥檒l see inadvertent head-on collisions, bodies twisting and turning to snatch flags, jump-ball scrums, guys crashing into the backs of receivers鈥 legs, etc., which is why I hear Pro Football Talk鈥檚 Chris Simms when he says, 鈥淚f somebody calls the head coach or GM of [an NFL team], and they鈥檙e like, 鈥榃e鈥檇 like to have Tyreek Hill for our flag football team,鈥 I鈥檇 be like, 鈥楴o. Get the hell out of here. You鈥檙e crazy.鈥欌
Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst feels the same. I鈥檓 betting many other NFL coaches and executives feel that way, too, about a high-stakes competition that would happen during NFL training camps.
So that鈥檚 the downside. And that鈥檚 all I was going to talk about until I spoke with former Pitt football player Chris Curd. Curd is the commissioner of the Pittsburgh Flag Football League and executive director of the Pennsylvania Flag Football Association. He is also an international ambassador of the game, having just returned from an NFL-sponsored trip to Ghana to help grow the sport.
That鈥檚 part of the good side here: An NFL presence at the Olympics could help grow what is an extremely inexpensive and accessible sport worldwide, much the way the Dream Team sparked an international basketball explosion.
鈥淭he Dream Team massacred everybody, but it lit a fuse,鈥 Curd says. 鈥淚 think we鈥檙e onto football鈥檚 version of that.鈥
Baker Mayfield (6) of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and NFC runs the ball against Minkah Fitzpatrick (39) of the Pittsburgh Steelers and AFC during the second half of the 2024 NFL Pro Bowl Games at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Fla.
The NFL, of course, also benefits from a potential worldwide expansion of flag football, sparked by its players: More people become NFL fans, and that means more (and more and more) money.
Curd also said that sprinkling NFL players onto the U.S. team would be the best way to go, as opposed to completely stocking the team with stars. We鈥檒l see about that. I鈥檓 thinking the NFL 鈥 while limiting the number of professional players on the team 鈥 wouldn鈥檛 want to take any chances on getting upset on home soil in the biggest flag football event ever staged.
Curd agrees there, saying, 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 want to sell something this hard and then not win.鈥
And that brings up another point: By making one player from each team available, the league actually is giving other countries a chance to have an NFL player or two on their team 鈥 and in a 5-on-5 game, even one guy could make a huge difference.
Imagine if Nelson Agholor and several other NFL players of Nigerian descent decided to play for Nigeria. Canada also could field an interesting team with players such as Josh Palmer, Chuba Hubbard and Chase Claypool (who could perform a first-down celebration as Canada tries to execute a last-minute drive).
NFL stars like Mahomes & Jefferson could play Olympic flag football at LA 2028鈥攈ere鈥檚 how.
鈥淭hose guys that have international ties or citizenship opportunities to play for another country, it鈥檚 no different than when Sidney Crosby plays for Canada and Victor Wembanyama for France,鈥 Curd says. 鈥淎nd countries will have a few years to ramp up for this.鈥
Right, so I鈥檓 thinking places such as China might take this very seriously and put together a team with, say, an Olympic sprinter as its pass rusher (Curd tells me speed is the key there, not strength, since there is no blocking).
In other words, it probably won鈥檛 be the U.S. against a YMCA team for gold. It might be something quite different. Something much better, with a sport the NFL says already is played by 20 million people across 100 countries.
I鈥檓 not sure any NFL team will want to send a superstar to L.A., but Curd sold me on the general idea.
I might have a hand over one eye, but I want to see it.
