Roger Goodell is confident NFL players will be in Los Angeles competing for gold in 2028, even if his own coaches aren’t so sure.
At the NFL owners meetings on Tuesday, Goodell pushed back on comments from Broncos head coach Sean Payton, who said at the same meetings that he would be “surprised” if even one active NFL player made the U.S. flag football roster for the 2028 Olympics. Payton had a reason to be skeptical, being that he coached one of the teams in last weekend’s Fanatics Flag Football Classic at BMO Stadium, where a roster full of current and former NFL stars got handled by the actual U.S. national flag football team.
“I think we have plenty of players that can acclimate,” Payton said, “but it’s going to take a month or two. And then if you’re one of those players, do you have that month or two? And if you’re training for that, you’re not training for the NFL?”
Goodell sees it differently.
“I think we’ll see NFL players in the Olympics,” he said. “They want to play. We just had a player here that wants to participate in the Olympics. I think it’ll be great for football. I think it’ll be great for the fans.”
He also cited his excitement about women’s flag football getting an Olympic platform for the first time, and pointed to the broader international growth of the game as part of why LA28 matters to the league.
NFL owners voted last May to allow players to compete in Olympic flag football, with each team permitted to release one player for the Games. The memo the league sent teams ahead of the Fanatics Classic made clear that teams could still bar players from competing under CBA rules, and that injuries in unsanctioned events would not be covered. What the Classic itself showed is that the U.S. national team — made up of players who have spent years in the five-on-five Olympic format — was not seriously challenged by the NFL roster.
The question of whether professional athletes belong in the Olympics is one that other leagues have wrestled with for a long time. The NHL missed three straight Olympics before returning to Milan this past February, where the USA won gold in men’s hockey for the first time since the 1980 Miracle on Ice. Baseball is in a similar spot heading into 2028, with the sport returning to the Summer Olympics at Dodger Stadium and commissioner Rob Manfred publicly optimistic about sending active big leaguers for the first time. The tournament runs July 15-20, right around the All-Star break, and Manfred has floated extending the break by about a week to accommodate it, though the two sides are still working through the details ahead of the CBA expiring at the end of this year.
The NFL has a more direct motivation than either of those leagues. The league announced Monday that its long-awaited professional flag football league is officially happening, partnering with TMRW Sports and a group of investors that includes Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Serena Williams, and Billie Jean King, with the NFL contributing as much as $32 million to get it off the ground.
The league wants it up and running before LA28, with Goodell saying last fall he expected the league to launch in the next couple of years. The 2028 Games are essentially the NFL’s best chance to legitimize flag football as something more than a Pro Bowl gimmick or a charity event headlined by retired quarterbacks.
Whether any of that is enough to put NFL players on the Olympic roster remains to be seen. Still, Goodell clearly thinks the answer is yes, and Payton, fresh off watching his team of NFL stars get handled by the national team, is considerably less certain.