This spring, Isaiah McKenzie arrived in town with one clear goal to impact his new community between practices. He found that opportunity in Nutley, N.J.

The 5-foot-7, 173-pound veteran wide receiver and return specialist had just signed after one season in Indianapolis, four in Buffalo, and a little more than one in Denver. McKenzie, a Miami native, got to talking with Ethan Medley, the Giants' director of community relations and youth football, and the topic of flag football came up.

McKenzie is well-versed in the sport. He played it and also coached girls at Downtown Doral Charter Upper School in South Florida for four years. Upon discovering this, Medley had just the person for him to see. So, he walked him down to Carmen Pizzano, the team's assistant video director who has been with the organization for 28 seasons.

"I was sitting in my office, E comes in, I've got my back towards him," Pizzano recalled. "He's like, 'Hey, Carm, Isaiah wants to help out. He wants to coach flag football.' I'm like, 'Huh, Isaiah who?' I turn around, and he's standing right there."

Pizzano's daughter, Gianna, was in the final stretch of her senior year at Nutley High School, located five miles away from the Quest Diagnostics Training Center. She was a captain of the flag football team and part of a generation that rode (and created) the first wave of the sport's growth at the high school level.

McKenzie wanted in.

"Working here with the Giants for so long – Gianna is my oldest and I have a 14-year-old son (Luciano) now playing football – I always envisioned trying to ask these guys to help out and just come show up to a practice," Pizzano said. "I never envisioned one of them actually coaching. He wanted to coach."

Pizzano relayed the idea to Joe Piro, the school's athletic director, after one of Gianna's practices. Piro didn't blink at the chance to have a seven-year NFL veteran on the sideline of one of his Raiders teams – and a committed one at that.

"He was living in Clifton and didn't have a car, so he was taking Ubers to practice, Ubers going home, Ubers to away games," Pizzano said. "The games he couldn't come to, he's texting me every quarter, 'How did we do? What's the score?' He'll be on a plane sitting there and texting me wanting to know how the girls are doing. He was all in right from the start."

When he first met the team, both sides admitted they were a little shy, which may come as a surprise because that is one word people would not use to describe the energetic professional athlete.

But one thing came through loud and clear: the team was all in. McKenzie was taken aback by the seriousness of the operation. It wasn't just one student dragging her friends there, which McKenzie had seen before.

"I come up here and Nutley has a quarterback, a receiver, they've got little running backs," McKenzie said. "I'm like, they've got a complete team."

That team, with McKenzie serving as an assistant coach/cheerleader/play-caller/cameraman, went on to win the division title and a playoff game before losing to the eventual state champions.

Members of the Nutley Raiders – including Gianna Pizzano, Morgan Dolaghan, Sydney Tramontana, Danielle Goode, Annamarie Ricco, Jenna Zoppi, Daniela Gagliardo, Skylar Florie, and Victoria Cabezas – recently visited training camp and reflected on their experience.

"During practices, he couldn't help himself from getting involved," Gianna Pizzano said. "He would scrimmage us in our practice. We would all try to get his flag and we could never and he would just zoom right past us."

Then there were the games. McKenzie, wearing a wristband with the play sheet on it, could be seen running up and down the sidelines, always eager to keep the referees in check. At the heart of it, though, he was there to offer advice.

"He would pull us right off the sideline and be like, you need to fix this, go do this, this is how you do it," Gianna Pizzano said. "And then we would go out there and we would do it. He was really good with doing things like that 1-on-1 and directing us and giving us tips."

"I just think him coming out was a big thing for all of us," Danielle Goode said. "He just brings so much energy and positivity to our team. When we were down in a game, he would pick us right back up. That was really cool. … He taught us a lot, he really did."

Nutley was one of 104 high school teams in the Tri-State Area that participated in a full girls flag football season this year, a 61 percent increase from 2023. Eleven states across the country, including New York, have sanctioned it as a varsity sport. New Jersey is on its way, having completed the first of a two-year pilot program. Connecticut is also emerging with 17 high schools taking part in a pilot season with the support of the Giants.

"We started as sophomores in high school. We had no idea what was going on," Gianna Pizzano said. "This was our first year where we were like, all right, we can go teach someone all the rules. Our first year we were like chickens with no heads. If you're starting from 5, it's a whole new world from what we experienced. It's what you know. It's like playing any other sport. But it's fun. You've got to appreciate it because there's no other team game like football in my opinion."

The Giants are proud to support these efforts and recently hosted all the girls flag football championship teams from the Tri-State Area high schools at an event called Built Ford Tough Field Day.

Of course, McKenzie was there. He even put on the belt and showed off his skills, including his patented "duck walk" where he gets low so no one can snatch his flag. Even his NFL teammates were impressed.

"[Outside linebacker Brian] Burns came over and was like, 'Oh! You know how to do that? I didn't know you knew how to do that,'" McKenzie said. "He was like, 'This is your natural habitat.'"

Indeed. Self-described as small, fast, and shifty, McKenzie has his eyes on Los Angeles 2028. That's when flag football will make its Olympic debut.

"I want to be a part of that USA Flag Football Team in 2028," McKenzie said. "That's my plan. I don't know if I'll be in the NFL or not, but I do want to be a part of that. I think it's fun because not only did I coach flag, but I've also played in the offseason most of the years and do tournaments."

McKenzie has been a fan of the Olympics all his life, listing American swimmer Michael Phelps and Jamaican sprinters Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Usain Bolt as his favorite athletes.

"I always thought I was as fast as them," McKenzie said. "But I'm not that fast."

Flag football will have to be his path to the podium.

Currently, USA Football is building a developmental pipeline to feed future National Teams competing in international competitions, including the Olympics. There are four ways to enter the U.S. Flag National Team selection process: talent ID camps, digital combines, sanctioned tournaments, and qualifier events.

In other words, it's more complicated and exclusive than just "getting our best high school football togethers and winning gold," as some of McKenzie's teammates like to joke.

"We had this argument the other day," McKenzie said after a training camp practice. "It was me, Gunner Olszewski, Lawrence Cager, Darius Slayton, and Brian Burns. They were like all we've got to do is get our best athletes, get our best high school football team play in the Olympics and win. I'm like, 'Listen, people that grew up around flag football that have been playing since they were like yay high and now they're like late 20s, early 30s – they've been playing this their whole life. Now they're specialized in that stuff, right?

"People in other countries have been waiting on this moment because there's a lot of people in Europe that have been waiting to play, also Mexico, Brazil, Japan, wherever. They've been waiting to show you all that they have flag football talent. It may not be tackle football, but flag football – a lot of people play that. … I'm pretty sure a lot of guys on the team think they can play flag until they play the Joes. If they play the Joes who play flag outside the facility, they'd probably be embarrassed."

Or, perhaps, if they played the Nutley Raiders.