Could Flag Football's Explosion Alter the NFL's Pipeline?

And what does it mean for your kid?

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stood nervously in front of the House Judiaciary Committee and refused to acknowledge a connection between head injuries from playing football and later brain trauma. The year was 2009, and if the seeds weren’t already planted, they were now. Professional football started to be stigmatized as anywhere from dangerous to reckless. Perhaps the seeds for the NFL’s massive leap into flag football began here as well, even if the league didn’t know it yet.

Flag football has exploded in popularity to the point that Goodell announced that the NFL is exploring the possibility of a professional flag football league during his Super Bowl presser in New Orleans two weeks ago. A source who spoke to Yahoo! Sports called that news an “understatement,” insinuating that plans are well underway.

This is huge. Massive really, particularly when considering the impact on youth football and the NFL’s pipeline.

To be clear, the NFL is far from imploding. It remains by far the most popular sport in America in terms of viewership which continues to soar. It’s a beautiful game with incredible strategy. Fantasy football and legal sports betting have added a significant boost (why else are we watching Jags-Giants on TNF?). And no league has a better marketing department than the NFL. But the cracks to the NFL’s nucleus - health and safety - have surfaced over the past decade. For people who care, there’s a lot to see.

Players like 49ers LB Chris Borland, Colts QB Andrew Luck, Ravens OL John Urschel., Bucs OL Ali Marpet, Panthers LB Luke Kuechly, and so many more exited the NFL on their terms. The NFL world likes to falsely label these players as early retirees. All these players were in their 20’s, and all quit because they no longer wanted to play football, some having serious concerns for their long-term well-being. That is not retiring; it’s called being a millennial. Most of these players cited some combinations of recurrent injuries. Some flat out said they were terrified of the unknowns about brain injuries.

These early career pivots are not outliers. They were the product of the light finally shone on the dangers associated with tackle football, especially the advances in CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) research.

After Junior Seau committed suicide in 2012, his brain was found to have the traumatic brain disease. Seau wasn’t the first NFL player posthumously diagnosed but he was the most famous to date. Meanwhile, 4500 former players sued the NFL for failing to protect players from repeated head injuries. The concussion lawsuit, which drew heavy media coverage, was settled for $1 billion in 2015. Many thought the league got off easy. 2015 also marked the release of the film, ‘Concussion’ starring Will Smith as Bennet Omalu, the doctor and forensic scientist who discovered CTE and claimed the Jets medical department and league as a whole turned a blind eye to his research. Add in the explosion of Twitter as a 24-7 discussion platform and the stigma of football as dangerous swelled.

People were spooked. Reporters started asking players if they would allow their kids to play football and if so, when.

The real issue for the NFL, though, was the rest of America. A decent enough chunk of parents in the general public, and sure, many of them moms, started to take a hard line against their kids playing tackle football.

Would the robust pipeline remain? In much of the South and Midwest, the answer was and continues to be yes. But the decline reverberated elsewhere. Per NFHS, 2021 marked the first time the number of participants in 11-player high school tackle football fell below a million players since the start of the 2000s. The reported total of 976,886 participants represented a 12.2% decrease from a 2008-09 peak. Many high school programs struggled to field teams. Some folded altogether. Pop Warner football had already seen its participation numbers rapidly drop.

The war on football was real. To captain its defense and strategy moving forward, the NFL tapped Roman Omen, a former Giants offensive lineman. At first, Omen worked on player health and safety. Then in 2016, he was named the NFL’s Senior Director of Youth Football, a job that has expanded to Omen’s present title of Vice President, Football Development.

Despite the bad publicity hurled at the NFL, Oben and the NFL kept its foot on the gas. Oben told Good Game last year that messaging for tackle has always been consistent and even more emphasized in the wake of fighting the concussion stigma. “Make sure there are protocols in place. Make sure there are heat acclimation rules,” he said. “I can’t control some parent who has two kids run at each either and it gets a million views on YouTube, but we can control the messaging on proper tackling techniques and all the benefits of tackle like teamwork and work ethic.'“

Meanwhile, the NFL saw a massive growth opportunity with flag football as a pathway to tackle. The league threw its marketing dollars behind flag, and participation rates have exploded. The growth is largely attributed to NFL FLAG, with more than 1,600 teams serving over 620,000 youth athletes (ranging from 4-17) in all 50 states.

“If a kid does nothing but play video games on his phone all day, he’s less likely to join a tackle league. But if there’s 100 kids who plays flag, you’re likely to get 20 of them playing tackle because they just want to do the next thing,” Oben said.

The NFL’s push for flag has been such a success that its reached all corners of football.

The Pro Bowl shifted to a flag football match. NFL Flag kids are featured everywhere from games to Super Bowl commercials. Mexican flag football star Diana Flores has skyrocketed to international fame. The NFL and YouTube partnered on a flag football game between two of the most popular streamers in the world, iShowSpeed and Kai Cenat, ahead of this year’s Super Bowl. The 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles will introduce flag football for the first time. Girl’s flag football is now a sanctioned high school sport in 14 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

The success of girl’s flag was so rapid that the NFHS (National Federation of State High School Associations) recently met in Indianapolis to develop the first national rules for flag football. The rulebook should be available in May, and suggests 7v7 as the starting point.

According to the IFAF (International Federation for American Football), 2.4 million kids in the United States are playing organized flag. Simply put, flag is the fastest growing youth sport in America. (Sorry pickleball!) So to the elephant in the room - what does that mean for boy’s flag and the future of football? Did the NFL lean too hard into flag?

“Tackle [football] will continue as the professional game played in the NFL and its amateur pipeline from youth through college,” said Troy Vincent Sr., the NFL’s EVP of football operations. “But flag will dominate in neighborhoods, schools and recreational leagues around the world. It's happening in front of our eyes.”

That’s all well and good but boy’s flag has all the making of a sport that will be soon be commonplace in high school and beyond. And yes, there are all kinds of low-key rec flag leagues but all of us embroiled in youth sports know if there’s money to be made, “travel” flag will be next.

With Goodell’s announcement of a possible professional flag league, the appeal of flag will only grow. The bigger question is what size dent, if any, does it make in the NFL’s pipeline.

Of course, the idea of flag money even nearing the realm of NFL money is unfathomable. And NFL money will only grow. Washington Post reporter Dave Sheinin worked on a series of stories about the future of football, and the Post’s polling showed a clear socio-economic divide when it came to question of participation.

“Historically oppressed minorities for whom the risk reward calculus sort of still tilts in the direction of playing. And also, you know, white conservatives in places especially in the South where football is the unquestioned king of the fall,” Sheinin told KJZZ Radio in Phoenix.

There are exceptions everywhere, of course. For those transfixed by the toughness and brutality inherent with tackle, nothing can compete. Flag was set up as a stepping stone to tackle but Oben points out that “flag has been embraced by the tackle community as football, not a separate sport.” So for those families whose kids might like the idea of tackle football but don’t need to play tackle football, flag is quickly becoming an intriguing alternative.

What the NFL has endured on the health and safety front has had measurable impact on the entire sports landscape. “It made us better. Every sport has had to absorb a player protection discussion, not just football. Soccer removed heading under a certain age. Same for lacrosse and bodychecking,” Oben said. “Other sports benefited from what football had to endure.”

Ironically, the sport that benefited the most is probably flag football.