The 48-year-old, seven-time Super Bowl champion even showed unusual elusive skills by evading a sack on a free rush, stepped up and delivered a strike for the TD after replacing Jalen Hurts<\/a> on fourth-and-goal on the opening drive of the game.<\/p>\n Brady followed up with another beautiful pass to his longtime buddy and former teammate Rob Gronkowski for the 2-point conversion, giving his team an 8-0 lead over the USA squad in the Fanatics Flag Football Classic.<\/p>\n It was all downhill from there as Gronk went down with a hamstring injury, and Brady and his team of current and former NFL players coached by Sean Payton couldn’t keep up.<\/p>\n Team USA crushed Brady’s Founders FFC 43-16 after dismantling Joe Burrow<\/a>‘s Wildcats FFC squad 39-16. Burrow, Jayden Daniels<\/a>, Saquon Barkley<\/a> and the Wildcats then eliminated Brady, Hurts and the Founders from the round-robin tournament with a 34-26 victory.<\/p>\n The Founders kept it closer in the championship game, but Team USA pulled away 24-14. The national team couldn’t be stopped on offense in three games, scoring on every possession except a kneel-down at the end of one victory.<\/p>\n “My heart is really hurting right now,” Brady said between losses.<\/p>\n Playing with a familiar scowl and intensity that helped him become the greatest quarterback in NFL history, Brady had a few other highlights despite his team’s dismal performance.<\/p>\n He called his own version of the “Philly Special” and tossed a TD pass to Hurts against the national team.<\/p>\n It was clear NFL players and coaches were learning the game and the rules on the fly after holding just a couple of practices before the 5-on-5 tournament.<\/p>\n They nearly had more penalties called against them than flags pulled. Team USA’s mastery of the sport, sophistication on offense and overall speed overwhelmed a group of players who barely practiced together.<\/p>\n Brady was penalized for tossing one of his flags to the ground because he couldn’t quickly insert it into place before taking a snap during a hurry-up situation.<\/p>\n Payton was angry an official told him it was third down on the sideline and then switched to fourth down before the snap.<\/p>\n With flag football set to make its Olympic debut at the 2028 LA Games, many NFL players have already said they would like an opportunity to play for gold.<\/p>\n Darrell “Housh” Doucette III, Nico Casares and the USA squad aren’t about to give up their spots. Nor should they have to. They proved they’re the kings of flag football.<\/p>\n The event was originally scheduled to take place at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but was relocated to BMO Stadium in Los Angeles because of the Iran war.<\/p>\n Brady’s team also included Ashton Jeanty<\/a>, Alvin Kamara<\/a>, Antoine Winfield Jr<\/a>., DeVonta Smith<\/a>, Von Miller<\/a>, Damar Hamlin<\/a>, Patrick Peterson and boxer Terence Crawford.<\/p>\n Burrow’s team, coached by Kyle Shanahan, included Kyle Juszczyk<\/a>, Odell Beckham Jr<\/a>., Davante Adams<\/a>, DeAndre Hopkins<\/a>, Derwin James Jr<\/a>., Luke Kuechly, Jalen Ramsey<\/a>, entertainer and boxer Logan Paul and YouTuber IShowSpeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mar 21, 2026, 08:59 PM ET Tom Brady started out like the GOAT of flag football before Team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-552431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tom Brady of the Founders FFC looks to pass during the Fanatics Flag Football Classic at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles on Saturday.\u00a0Katelyn Mulcahy\/Getty Images<\/p>\n