When NFL owners voted to allow players to participate in the Olympics, they stirred the imagination of football fans and players alike.

What would it be like to see your favorite players in the Olympics? Who would be on football’s version of the Dream Team? Which countries could players represent?

“It’s awesome knowing that we will have the opportunity to represent our country,” said Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton, who reposted the news with an emoji of a South Korean flag. “No matter who you are, or where you’re from, it’s an honor to represent the people you grew up around or with on the world stage.”

But all of these musings assume that NFL players will be able to make the transition from tackle football to flag football well enough to compete on the Olympic stage.

The conversation about NFL players’ participation in the Olympics remains complex. There are injury and scheduling concerns. There’s a debate over whether they should be allowed to take the place of those who have spent years on Team USA’s flag football roster. There’s a conversation to be had about the competition gap. The list goes on.

All of those points are moot if NFL players can’t make the team.

As a two-time Pro Bowler, Hamilton has played in the NFL’s flag game. He described it as “a completely different game from tackle.” He said it takes more skill than you think and that it can be difficult for a player who relies on physicality to transition when contact is against the rules.

“It would take a ton of adjustment,” Hamilton said. “People always joke about the guys who have already established themselves in the sport getting bounced by NFL guys coming in, but they have a point. I felt a big difference between their game and our game when I was in the Pro Bowl. I’m sure there are plenty of things they are better at than us NFL guys.”

Callie Brownson has extensive experience in both sports. She played women’s tackle football professionally and coached men’s football for the Cleveland Browns. Now she is the senior director of high performance and national team operations for USA Football, the organization that will select Team USA for the Olympics.

“I’ll tell you this,” said Brownson, who played wide receiver and free safety. “I was a pretty good tackle player. I was not a great flag player. I was OK. I was serviceable.”

Tom LaNeve has worked at all levels of flag football, from youth programs to refereeing the first Pro Bowl flag games. He has helped run clinics and crafted flag rule books, including for the NFL flag programs.

A lot of rules are different, but when it comes to skills, LaNeve said, the foundations for flag are more similar than different than their tackle counterparts.

On offense, you’re running routes. You’re passing the ball and handing it off. You want to create space to advance up the field. You need good hands to catch the ball.

On defense, flag teams use man-to-man coverage and zone coverage. Although you’re focusing on pulling a flag instead of tackling a human, you’re still tracking a target point.

But the flag pulling makes for a huge difference. Brownson said that’s one of the biggest areas defensive tackle players struggle with in the transition. She described it as an “art form” and said it’s a very different mechanic. And, if you mess up, you can’t revert to physicality to cover for your mistakes.

Jakob Black, head of officiating for USA Flag, which organizes tournaments across the country, said defensive backs probably have a harder transition to flag than wide receivers because of that lack of physicality. They “have to relearn how to defend without using their hands.”

Additionally, flag defenses feature a “rusher,” who can go after the quarterback if they declare they are rushing. Often, people think of a classic edge or outside linebacker, Brownson said, but the relevant skills are that of a safety or a nickel.

“It’s about quickness and being able to close speed on a straight line,” Brownson said.

On offense, the differences relate more to spacing and timing than skills. The field is smaller, so routes have less time to develop. And, because offensive players can’t impede the rusher’s lane to the quarterback, quarterbacks have to make decisions faster. That means receivers have to be ready faster.

One of the biggest adjustments once a player has the ball is resisting the urge to guard the flag, Black said. You can’t stiff-arm a defender, and in international rules, you can’t jump to move the flag away from opponents.

That means flag players have developed techniques to protect their flags legally.

“There is some skill in regards to players when someone’s trying to grab their flag,” LaNeve said. “There’s a move called the dip that … the most athletic and the most experienced flag player can execute where they actually drop their hips down to a point where their knee is barely off the ground [and they’re still able to advance the ball].”

Black said this can also be called “squat running” or “duck walking.” He said it’s difficult because of the balance required, and many players are penalized because they place their hands on the ground for balance.

From what Black has seen, it usually takes a tackle player six to eight months to “reboot their minds into ‘I can’t run through a player’” and adjust to flag, although both he and Brownson emphasized that it’s a case-by-case basis.

When contemplating what it would take to play flag, Hamilton said he would want to slim down and become faster rather than stronger. As Black said, it’s a game of finesse.

However, everyone agreed that, given time, certain NFL players would quickly adapt, considering they’re elite athletes.

But how much time would they be given to do so? That’s to be determined, as well as a whole list of other details, in the three years before the Olympics open on July 14, 2028. The International Federation of American Football will determine rules, while Team USA will determine rosters and team owners will decide how much to let the Olympics determine the NFL’s schedule and decision-making.

Brownson threw in another element to consider: Some of the best flag football players don’t come from football at all. One of the best female flag players, Isabella Geraci, played college basketball.

Here at The Banner, we decided to do a fun exercise where we draft flag teams using only Ravens. We drafted with the assumption contactless blocking was allowed, which is a feature of some flag leagues, so the teams are skewed. But stay tuned for The Banner Ravens Podcast to see the rosters we ended up with.