NFL players can now partake in Olympic flag football
Olympic flag football, which will make it’s debut at the 2028 summer games, just got bumped up a level after the NFL agreed to let its players partake.
Sports Pulse
For the first time since 2016, the NFL is adding a new end-of-year award to its slate.
NFL Executive Vice President Troy Vincent announced Wednesday the addition of a Protector of the Year award, which will recognize the league’s best offensive lineman. Vincent credited Buffalo Bills offensive tackle Dion Dawkins and former NFL tackle Andrew Whitworth for championing the cause of adding the award.
According to ESPN’s Brooke Pryor, “a panel that includes a number of former OL greats” will vote on the winner of the new annual award.
The Protector of the Year will be the first new award introduced to the end-of-year NFL Honors show since the Offensive Line of the Year award the league introduced in 2016 – before discontinuing it in 2018.
The league’s other most recently introduced awards at its annual show were the AP Assistant Coach of the Year award, which started in 2014, and the Art Rooney Award, which also started in 2014, recognizing a player for his outstanding sportsmanship.
Dawkins doesn’t only deserve credit for pushing the idea – he may also be the man who coined the new award’s name.
In late January, after the NFL announced the finalists for last year’s NFL Honors, Dawkins stumped for a version of the award for the men in the trenches.
“Offensive linemen don’t have awards for being great,” he said at the time. “There’s not a ‘Protector of the Year’ award.”
And now, just a few months later, there is.