# USA flag football athlete insists NFL stars won’t adapt easily for Olympics

Michael Better compared himself favorably with Micah Parsons and Patrick Mahomes in a new documentary film

Three-time Super Bowl champion  may not be done being pitted against the USA men’s flag football team, whose reigning world champion members are bidding to represent the country when the sport debuts at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

During an interview on a new -styled documentary set to begin streaming Tuesday, USA men’s flag team starting pass rusher Michael Better said he’d “rather rush Patrick Mahomes any day” instead of Darrell Doucette Jr, the quarterback who  in Finland in August.

Better, who asserts that Doucette is “the face” of flag football, also said he is “a better rusher than Micah Parsons”, twice an  first-team All-Pro. In this case, though, Better said this in the context of his non-contact sport rather than tackle format where the Dallas Cowboys linebacker plies his trade.

Better’s remarks on the film could revive a debate over which Doucette and Mahomes  while making the media rounds in February ahead of Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans.

It began in mid-August when Doucette  that it was “disrespectful” for the public to assume that – despite their stated interest in doing so – Mahomes and fellow NFL signal-callers like the Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow and the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts would oust him and his teammates from their spots on the USA flag football team for the 2028 Olympics.

TMZ Sports later quoted him as saying, “I feel like I’m better than Patrick Mahomes” at flag football “because of my IQ of the game”.

Despite his attempt at nuance, many commentators mocked Doucette and suggested that he should resign himself to watching the Olympics as a spectator if Mahomes, Hurts and their ilk took setting their sights on his job seriously.

Doucette then shut his detractors up by leading the US men’s flag team to a fifth straight world championship, passing for nearly 1,100 yards while throwing for, running in or catching 28 scores in seven games.

Ahead of February’s Super Bowl in Doucette’s hometown of New Orleans, both men generally agreed that the approach should be to let the best players available represent the US at the Olympics. USA Football’s chief executive officer Scott Hallenbeck, whose organization is in charge of building the national men’s and women’s flag teams going to the Olympics, said a realistic outcome is for a core of men’s flag players to be reinforced by a few NFL stars who have the attributes to pull off a smooth transition to the five-on-five gold medal competition being planned for 2028.

It is a concept not too dissimilar from Olympic men’s soccer, an under-23 competition where each squad can have three overage players. A memorable example of that was when Brazilian superstar Neymar joined a roster of relatively lesser known players to win their country’s first Olympic gold medal in the sport at Rio 2016.

In any event, Champions Rising – which essentially gives the  treatment to the unexpectedly emotional process of constructing the US men’s and women’s flag rosters that both won world championships in August – casts Better as a bit of an underdog. He served the US military in the Middle East after playing high school tackle football, then sacrificed his goal of a deferred collegiate career in the sport after starting a family.

After seeking a second act in flag football and trying out for the US national team in 2023, the squad’s coaches cut him. He also fractured the right side of his face after inadvertently clashing heads with an opponent while both jockeyed for position during a pass, requiring a plate and bracket to be inserted over his broken cheek and orbital bone.

“It’s no smiles and no games when you walk on the field,” Better says in the film, which similarly profiles other men’s and women’s players who tried out for spots, successfully or not, on teams that went on to win world championships.

Better then led the US in quarterback sacks and pressures as the team outscored its opponents by an average of 34.9 points per game on the way to the world title in August. One of those sacks was a two-point safety in the tournament final.

Champions Rising makes clear no US national flag team player is exempt from trying out annually. Still, Better makes clear he has no desire to just roll over and surrender his spot to someone like Parsons, who has  about taking 2027 off from the NFL to focus on making the 2028 Olympic flag football team.

Better, in the movie, says: “You ain’t taking my spot.”
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