He’s five feet, seven inches. He weighs 140 pounds. Darrell “Housh” Doucette nevertheless performed a cannonball into the deep end of the pro football pool last year, when he declared he’d be a better flag football player than Patrick Mahomes, given Doucette’s knowledge of the game.
Doucette and other flag football players ostensibly will get their chance, if the tryout process for the 2028 Olympics gives them a fair chance to compete with active NFL players.
“The flag guys deserve their opportunity,” Doucette told Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post. “That’s all we want. 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.”
Doucette believes that the current complement of American flag football players is good enough to win gold, without NFL players horning in.
“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’s confidence comes from the inherent differences between flag football and tackle football. “It’s entirely two different games,” Doucette said. “You can’t really compare flag football and tackle football.”
“These are things that we practice and we work on to become great,” Doucette said. “Those guys, they don’t understand it yet.”
The looming opponents of the U.S. men’s team believe the NFL players will figure it out.
Chad Palmer, the head coach of the Canadian men’s national flag football team for eight years, would rather face Doucette and his teammates than an all-star collection of NFL talent.
“We have a better chance of beating the flag players than the NFLers,” Palmer told Kilgore. “I say that with a fair bit of confidence.”
Palmer believes former tackle players have greater skills than flag players. He also believes that tackle football players can quickly close the gap with their tackle football skills.
“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.”
Palmer believes the Canadian team also will consist of primarily NFL players, too.
“I don’t think the current guys who have been doing it for a long time will hold a candle to the pros,” Palmer said.
Still, with the NFL limiting eligibility to one player per team (along with the franchise’s International Pathway Program player), there will only be so many high-end NFL players to go around. In all, 32 non-IPP players will be available. With a five-on-five format and 10 players per team and six teams in the 2028 Olympic tournament, neither half of all players necessarily won’t be from regular NFL rosters.
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