Tackle football is very different from flag football.<\/p>\n
Current and former NFL players found that out on Saturday, against the U.S. men\u2019s national flag football team.<\/p>\n
Team USA went 3-0 against the pair of hand-picked teams of pro players (with a smattering of non-football players) to win the inaugural Fanatics Flag Football Classic. Darrell \u201cHoush\u201d Doucette III was named the tournament MVP.<\/p>\n
The flag football players romped in the round-robin version of the event, beating the Wildcats, 39-16, and the Founders, 43-16. The Wildcats outscored the Founders in the other preliminary game, 34-26, setting up a rematch between the Wildcats and Team USA for the championship. (Tom Brady\u2019s team went 0-2 on the day.)<\/p>\n
In the final game, the Wildcats kept it close, losing 24-14.<\/p>\n
Still, it was clear throughout the day that the NFL players lack the knowledge of the flag football rules and the skills necessary to master that specific brand of the game.<\/p>\n
And the NFL players didn\u2019t have much time to prepare. As Fox\u2019s Greg Olsen described it at one point, they had a pair of \u201chalf-assed walkthroughs\u201d this week.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also something to be said for recruiting NFL players based not on name recognition but skillset. And there\u2019s value in practicing. <\/p>\n
But most current players are focused on their main occupations. Former NFL players could more aggressively throw themselves into the process of understanding the game.<\/p>\n
Even then, there\u2019s a gap between the guys who play flag football on a regular basis and those who don\u2019t. It will give the folks at USA Football even more to think about as the 2028 Olympics approach.<\/p>\n
For now, it\u2019s a no-brainer: The flag football players should be the ones to represent the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tackle football is very different from flag football. Current and former NFL players found that out on Saturday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2026],"tags":[7],"class_list":{"0":"post-826134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116270138089047138","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}