Quarterback Darrell Doucette III runs with the ball during last year's IFAF flag football world championships. (Lester Barnes/USA Football)
Darrell Doucette III is probably the best flag football player in the world. He quarterbacked the U.S. national team to the past four global championships and won every international game he played. Now 35, he has played flag — never tackle — since he was 8 years old. He stands 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds, but as he once said, flag football makes quarterback a “size-less position.”
Doucette also may not hold his title for long. On Tuesday, the pool of potential flag football players expanded to the best tackle football players in the world. NFL team owners voted to allow the league’s players to compete in the 2028 Olympics, where flag football — aided heavily by a push from an NFL with global ambitions — will make its debut.
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Fans immediately began dreaming up the ultimate U.S. Olympic flag football team. Lamar Jackson or Patrick Mahomes at quarterback? Who could possibly cover Justin Jefferson, CeeDee Lamb and Ja’Marr Chase? Hey, Travis Hunter already knows how to play both ways.
Doucette watched the debate unfold with excitement and trepidation. He was proud to see his sport further penetrate the sporting landscape. He also worried the players who represented the United States would be left behind — even though he believed players with flag experience held subtle but substantial advantages over NFL athletes.
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“This is a sport that we’ve played for a long time, and we feel like we are the best at it and we don’t need other guys,” Doucette said. “But we all have one goal in mind, and that’s to represent our country. We’re definitely open to all competition. 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.”
Doucette probably will get his wish. In its statement on the vote, the NFL said player participation would begin with a “tryout or qualification process.” USA Football, the governing body that oversees U.S. Olympic flag football, nodded to current flag players. “We’re fortunate to have a talent pool that already features prominent flag football stars who have helped USA Football establish a gold-medal standard in international competition,” CEO Scott Hallenbeck said in a statement.
Doucette went mildly viral in August, when he told TMZ, “At the end of the day, I feel like I’m better than Patrick Mahomes because of my IQ of the game.” (Mahomes responded on social media with the confused 50 Cent meme.) Doucette didn’t really mean to sound so bombastic. As the national team’s quarterback, he just wanted to stick up for his teammates and make the point that flag players deserved the same chance as NFL stars to make the Olympics.
“The flag guys deserve their opportunity. That’s all we want,” Doucette said. “We felt like we worked hard to get the sport to where it’s at, and then when the NFL guys spoke about it, it was like we were getting kicked to the side. I felt like I was the guy who could speak out for my peers, for my brothers that’s been working hard to get to this level, for us not to be forgotten.”
Two different games
A football fan might expect the difference between tackle and flag to be like five-on-five and three-on-three basketball. Doucette said it’s more like tennis and table tennis.
When they play flag, NFL players’ instincts may work against them. In the international game, physicality is strictly prohibited. Defenders can take charges, as in basketball. A stiff-arm would be a penalty for flag-guarding.
“It’s entirely two different games,” Doucette said. “You can’t really compare flag football and tackle football.”
NFL players would need to train for basic techniques that are natural to experienced flag football players. For an NFL wideout, the skill of catching the ball is like breathing. Pulling a flag is the same for a flag football player, but not for an NFL player. Flag players have trained to twist their hips or lunge — “hip-turn” and “dip,” in the parlance — at full speed to avoid flag-pulling defenders.
“These are things that we practice and we work on to become great,” Doucette said. “Those guys, they don’t understand it yet.”
In 2018, NFL Films documented the American Flag Football League championship game, the winner of which received $1 million. Doucette led a team of flag players against recently retired NFL players; running back Justin Forsett and quarterback Seneca Wallace were the biggest names. To the surprise of most onlookers, the flag players didn’t just win. They destroyed the recently retired NFLers, who hurt themselves with a raft of penalties.
“It requires a lot of different abilities that football, in general, doesn’t require, but you definitely have to have speed, elusiveness and being able to get away from people,” Minnesota Vikings linebacker Brian Asamoah told reporters at the NFL announcement. “It’s a completely different game.”
Talent overcomes gaps
For the past eight years, Chad Palmer served as the Canadian national team’s flag football coach. He was presented this week with a hypothetical: Would he rather play against current U.S. flag players or a team of NFL pros? He did not hesitate.
“We have a better chance of beating the flag players than the NFLers,” Palmer said. “I say that with a fair bit of confidence.”
When Palmer searched for players, he started with former tackle football players. He found that flag players couldn’t match their skill. He agrees that flag and tackle are different sports and that flag’s nuance would create a gap between NFL players and flag players. But the NFLers’ talent, skill set and athleticism would obliterate that gap.
“The transferables are all over the place,” Palmer said. “If you take a Ja’Marr Chase — he’s spent his entire life route-running and finding leverage in coverage and understanding football and getting paid a lot of money to do it. How can a player that’s playing a rec sport in the past be even in the same stratosphere? No chance.
“Even in Canada, we will be made up of mostly NFLers, I would think. All the countries doing the right thing will pick the best players for the spot. They all have to try out. But I don’t think the current guys who have been doing it for a long time will hold a candle to the pros.”
Flag football scheme, like its rules, is radically different. Flea flickers, halfback passes and multiple laterals “are trick plays in the NFL,” Doucette said. “For us, that’s an every-down play.”
But NFL players could mitigate those gaps, too. They presumably will have coaches experienced in flag football. The greatness of great athletes extends to their inherent feel for games. Palmer noticed immediate improvement as he watched the flag version of the Pro Bowl.
“You got to see the best football players on the planet figure out flag football live in front of your eyes,” Palmer said. “The difference in the first half and second half of those games is incredible. Give them training camps and other tournaments plus coaching, bottom line is, they’ll figure it out enough.”
Palmer may understand best how professional tackle personnel could consume traditional flag players and coaches: It happened to him. Palmer reapplied for his job this year, and last week, Football Canada informed him he wouldn’t be coaching in the Olympics. It hired Paul LaPolice, a former Canadian Football League coach without flag experience.
Palmer held no resentment. He was happy LaPolice retained his defensive coordinator, one of his former players. If flag football were an Olympic sport in 2016, when he first coached Canada, Palmer figures he wouldn’t have been hired in the first place.
“It’s just the evolution of the sport,” Palmer said. “The growth we’re seeing in flag football is great. Does it suck for the 12 to 15 people that used to get to compete at the flag world championships? Yeah.”