The NFL approved a monumental rules resolution this week that will allow players to participate in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles—which for the first time will include flag football as an official sport.
Immediately upon said rule being passed, many began to imagine what the LA28 rosters would look like with the league's best at the forefront. Team USA quarterback Darrell Doucette III, however, doesn't think they need NFL players to compete for the gold:
“This is a sport that we’ve played for a long time, and we feel like we are the best at it..." he told the Washington Post's Adam Kilgore. "We don’t need other guys."
Darrell Doucette III, quarterback of the USA national flag football team, says flag football players "deserve their opportunity" to play for Team USA in the 2028 Los Angeles Games 👀 pic.twitter.com/XDvvVo7aHt
— ESPN (@espn) May 26, 2025
Doucette—who has won two IFAF Flag Football World Championships for the red, white, and blue—also said that with one goal in mind, they are "open to competition on the roster," but believes the flag guys "deserve their opportunity" to compete.
"If those guys come in and ball out and they’re better than us, hats off to them. Go win that gold medal for our country."
This isn't the first time Doucette has made headlines comparing flag and the NFL. The 35-year-old told TMZ last summer that he's "better than" Patrick Mahomes—at least at flag football.
"I’m not hiding from the competition, none of my teammates nor anybody else in the flag football world are hiding from the competition," Doucette said, defending his team's right to participate in the games. "But at the end of the day, I feel like I’m better than Patrick Mahomes because of my IQ of the game. I know he’s right now the best in the league, I know he’s more accurate, I know he has all these intangibles, but when it comes to flag football, I feel like I know more than him."
It remains to be seen which NFL players will actually try out for Team USA ahead of the 2028 Olympics. In the resolution's ground rules, it's spelled out that any player under an NFL contract is allowed to participate in tryouts and that a limit of one player per NFL team—as well as any team's designated international player—can play for their home country in the games.
One way or another, it seems like there may be some drama during roster construction for Team USA.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Team USA Flag Football QB Says They 'Don't Need' NFL Players for Olympics.
