NFL players' biggest flag-football challenge: Playing defense

On Saturday, the U.S. men's national flag football team gave current and former NFL players a crash course in the no-touchy version of the game. And while it resulted in a 3-0 day for the guys who play flag football on a regular basis, the experience opened the eyes of the NFL players in advance of USA Football's eventual effort to select the members of the 2028 U.S. men's Olympic team.

Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow got enough of a taste of the game to want to play in the Olympics, when the surprisingly sparse and subdued crowd at BMO Stadium in L.A. will be replaced with a packed house of raucous fans.

The offensive side of the ball isn't the biggest problem for the men who play tackle football — except when it comes to the temptation for players like Saquon Barkley to run over those who are trying to grab his flag. Defense is the issue.

It became instantly obvious, from the first possession of Team USA, that NFL players need plenty of work on the art of grabbing flags. But if anyone can figure that out with (as the cool kids say) "time on task," it's the elite athletes who have made it to the highest rung of the football ladder.

The separate issue on Saturday became the composition of the players who volunteered (for the appropriate fee) to participate. It started as a boondoggle to Saudi Arabia, with all three teams made up of big-name players. When the event relocated to Los Angeles, the vibe shifted from a trio of high-priced beer-league teams to Rocky vs. Thunderlips.

By then, it was too late to select NFL players based on the skills and abilities best suited to competing with Team USA: Cornerbacks (not safeties or linebackers), receivers (not tight ends), and scatbacks (not bulldozers). And the quarterbacks also need to be shifty and agile and quick, because it takes more than just throwing passes in five-on-five flag football.

Saturday's event complicates, in the short term, the efforts of USA Football to select the 2028 Olympic team. Next year's Fanatics Flag Football Classic could, in theory, become part of that process.

Either way, the powers-that-be need to use more strategery and less starf—kery when picking the participants for the 2027 flag event from the ranks of current and former NFL players.

Cornerbacks, receivers, scatbacks. No boxers or YouTubers or Logan Pauls.

In the end, Saturday was simply Round One of Rocky vs. Thunderlips. The Wildcats, by the second time they played Team USA, had a chance to win. By March 2027, Rocky Balboa will be ready to power slam Hulk "Housh" Hogan.