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.