USA flag football star: Would be ‘disrespectful’ if NFL players automatically got Olympics spots

In the build-up to flag football’s debut at the 2028 Olympics, the participation decisions of top NFL stars — from Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts to Tyreek Hill and others — will capture plenty of attention.

But one current player on the current United States men’s national football team doesn’t want the full-time flag football players to lose spots automatically.

“I think it’s disrespectful that they just automatically assume that they’re able to just join the Olympic team because of the person that they are — they didn’t help grow this game to get to the Olympics,” quarterback Darrell Doucette III told the Guardian. “Give the guys who helped this game get to where it’s at their respect.”

Doucette, listed as a quarterback and center on the United States men’s roster for the 2024 IFAF Flag Football World Championship in Finland later this month, won the 2021 edition of the tournament in Jerusalem before guiding them to titles in the World Games the following year and Americas Continental Flag Football Championship in 2023.

After defeating Mexico by four points in the title game last year, Doucette won the MVP award for the game, according to the USA football website.

But the sport has navigated a different type of spotlight since getting announced as one of the additions — along with baseball, softball, lacrosse and others — for the 2028 Olympics in Paris.

Mahomes said last November that he’d “definitely want to” participate in the event if it worked out, while Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, Dolphins star wideout Tyreek Hill and Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams have also expressed interest in potentially playing in Los Angeles that summer, according to the Guardian.

Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was also featured in a recent commercial — promoted by the NFL — for flag football, tossing a football toward the Coliseum in Los Angeles and saying, “It’s our turn.”

But, in the eyes of Doucette, Hurts and the other stars might need to work to unseat the current national team members from their roster spots.

“We just don’t think they’re going to be able to walk on the field and make the Olympic team because of the name, right?” Doucette told the outlet, while also adding that “it’s not that we need these guys” to fill out their roster.

“They still have to go out there and compete,” he said.