Broncos Players Could Enter NFL Flag Football Leagues in 2027
Broncos players could have a new professional route in late-spring or early-summer 2027, when the NFL is eyeing launches for two flag football leagues, one for men and one for women. The plan sits alongside the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where men’s and women’s flag football will appear for the first time.
Peter O’Reilly lays out the build
Peter O’Reilly said the league is still shaping the basics. “We’re in the lab, if you will, of really building what that league’s going to be like,” he said during a Monday interview on the Up & Adams show.
He said the NFL is thinking through the structure, where games will be played and how the rollout will work. “Thinking about what’s the structure of it, where are we playing games, how does it roll out? Incredibly exciting to be having conversations with the athletes who are going to play in this league, who maybe dreamed one day there might be a professional flag league, and now we’re saying, ‘This is real.’”
O’Reilly also said the league will include a combine and a draft. “There’s going to be a combine for this pro flag league. There’s going to be a draft. There’s going to be an opportunity to play this sport at the highest level, and it’s going to be awesome.”
Olympic path and league structure
The NFL’s flag push has been building in steps. Last year, owners approved a resolution allowing active players to try out for Olympic flag football teams, and in March the league announced TMRW Sports as its developmental and operational partner for launching professional flag football.
The scale is already there. The NFL says flag football has 20 million participants across youth, men’s and women’s levels in 100 countries, while the National Federation of State High School Associations says the sport is offered at the high school level in 39 states. Seventeen states have it sanctioned, and 22 more use it as pilot programs.
That pipeline now reaches toward the Olympics and beyond. In April, eight teams played in the first college women’s flag football tournament, another sign that the sport is moving deeper into organized competition.
Olympic interest around NFL players
Roger Goodell said a significant number of NFL players had shown interest in Olympic flag football, and the Fanatics Flag Football Classic gave that idea a public test. Team USA won all three games against NFL players by a combined score of 106-44.
Joe Burrow, Jayden Daniels and Tom Brady were among the NFL players involved in that event, which underscored how far the pro game still has to go before it reaches the top international level. O’Reilly said the women’s league in particular would be built around the best players from around the world, calling it “a distinct sport, a distinct path.”
For players such as the Broncos group referenced in the league discussion, the next step is simple: flag football is moving from an Olympic showcase toward a pro structure with a combine, a draft and a target launch window in 2027. The NFL is still building the framework, but the pathway is now out in the open.
