NFL to the World: Meet Jacquelyn Dahl, the agent of Patrick Mahomes backing Flag Football's women to be Olympic icons in Los Angeles

“Such a stud,” interjects Jacquelyn Dahl. The cogs in the mind of an NFL super agent are turning. You can almost see it, feel it.

“Honestly, I’m fangirling both from a professional level but also a personal level,” she adds.

Dahl, the agent of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and three-time Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes, had been featuring as a guest speaker on an ‘NFL Women in American Football’ panel held at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Three seats down from her sat Jochebed Frimpong, around the neck of whom glistened a gold medal as she charted her unlikely journey from timid self-confessed ‘rubbish-at-communicating’ 13-year-old to newly-crowned Team GB European Flag Football champion and quintessential, powerfully-spoken 20-year-old role model carving a path for the next generation of young girls. A stud, indeed.

Dahl knows one or two things about studs and stars in the world of sport. In Frimpong, there is a sense she may have discovered another, and one of many beacons driving Flag Football’s ascent ahead of its historic Olympic debut at Los Angeles 2028.

“I think that female flag football players are going to be the icons of LA 2028, it’s happening,” Dahl tells Sky Sports in an exclusive interview as part of ‘NFL to the World’.

“Women’s sports is just booming in the US right now. And everybody is so excited about it. There’s so much conversation around ‘Unrivaled’ [a women’s three-on-three basketball league], around NWSL [National Women’s Soccer League].

“Now being in the Olympics, it’s like everybody just needs to get ready. Also having a league like the NFL behind it, you just know that it’s going to succeed.

“I truly think that just based off of conversations that I’m having every day with CMOs and CEOs of these big NFL partners like Nike and Adidas and Wilson, they’re ready for it and they’re asking me where we go with this.”

Frimpong recently helped guide Great Britain’s women to a second straight European Flag football title in an overtime victory over Austria in Paris. She would acknowledge her own night-and-day growth in confidence and influence, but there, too, remained a modest ‘this is crazy!’ under-playing and disbelief to her own involvement as a chief spokesperson for flag amid its legacy-building chapter.

Both Dahl and Phoebe Schecter were swift and unequivocal in accentuating her impact, as much underscoring a united front and a fierce, ever-evolving campaign to cement a place on the global sporting landscape.

Dahl recalled helping her athlete friends build their brand off the field during her time at the University of California San Diego, assisting with social media and brokering deals before eventually being recruited by a large agency out of Houston. She meanwhile pointed to American rugby player Ilona Maher, whose performances, social media profile and advocacy for women’s sport and body positivity at the 2020 Olympics culminated in global fame and a spike in rugby’s audience.

“We saw it with Maher and the platform that she built and what she’s able to do now and continue to commercialise her brand,” she continued. “She has truly, and no offense to rugby, but not many young girls were watching rugby in the US before the Olympics and now they are and it’s incredible.”

Flag football is among the fastest-growing and most inclusive sports on the planet; just as she did for her friends at university and as Maher did for both herself and rugby as something of a modern blueprint, Dahl is seeking to elevate the Frimpongs of the world.

“My daughter is four years old and next year she’s going to start playing flag football,” Dahl says. “And that’s a programme that exists now that she can be playing flag football in Arizona. It’s so exciting that she gets to watch me, what I do working in football and then understand it, be a fan of Patrick [Mahomes], be a fan of my clients, and then be able to actually translate and play the sport.

“Whereas before that, that might not necessarily be the case. It’s just so exciting to see that growth.

“I was just having conversations with my good friends here from the Chiefs about which women’s flag football team they can sign in Kansas City. Patrick Mahomes just signed 15 high schools to his brand with Adidas this past month and the next goal is what we can do in flag.

“I know he’s passionate about it, the Chiefs are obviously so passionate about it. So it’s happening, there’s dollars to be spent.”

Dahl initially worked with an agency that represented around 200 athletes in what she deemed her first ‘foot in the door’ in the industry, before stepping away with no clients to start her own company in 2018. It was a move in view of representing a smaller pool of athletes in order to hone in on the job of maximising and establishing their profiles.

Among her earliest clients was New England Patriots Super Bowl champion Danny Amendola, who would later introduce Dahl to a gifted quarterback from his alma mater Texas Tech. His name? Patrick Mahomes.

Mahomes, the 10th overall pick at the 2017 NFL Draft, has inspired the Chiefs to victory in three of five Super Bowl appearances since 2019 as a two-time MVP, an era-defining face of the league and a generational talent who has also become one of football’s greatest champions of women’s sport.

Dahl has embraced the task of ‘finding the Patrick Mahomes of flag’. Easier said than done.

“You definitely don’t create it,” she explains. “Just like I don’t take credit for anything that Patrick has built on his own, that’s who he is.

“Obviously skill on the field is important, getting to that platform, being on the team ahead of the Olympics. But I lean on leagues like the NFL telling me who are some of these rising stars.

“I would love to work with all of the girls because I just think there’s so much support that they could use. And I’ve learned even just in the NWSL in the US, some of these girls don’t have agents, managers, or people to lean on or to ask for help.

“I say to other young agents or women who want to get in the business, go out and sign a US women’s flag football player because I truly believe going into the Olympics they’re going to be stars.”

Football has made positive progress as more female coaches, officials, front office personnel and agents secure opportunities across the NFL. But hurdles remain.

Dahl cited her own experiences of pushback amid her ascent as representative to football’s best player, noting encouragement from Serena Williams and Allyson Felix’s former agent Jill Smoller.

“I would say we’re on the rise of there being less challenges, just because I’m a woman,” she said. “But of course, as I was coming up, there’s always going to be challenges. I got questioned often.

“I got questioned what I was going to do once I started having kids, and if I was going to be able to do my job if I had kids. And I’m like, ‘well, I’m not dying’.

“And now I have two daughters, and they love watching what I do and they’re fully understanding what I do. Honestly, it takes other women ahead of you to inspire the next generation.

“I’m very grateful for women like Jill Smoller telling me, ‘no, you can do this’.”

Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl-winning quarterback Jalen Hurts previously spoke glowingly of working with an entirely female management group led by Nicole Lynn. He insisted he merely wanted to hire the best.

“I think that is the coolest thing ever for him to say that,” said Dahl. “He didn’t intentionally go out seeking women to be on his team, he just wanted the best people on his team, and they just so happen to be really powerful, incredible women in this industry.

“That was one of my favourite headlines around that Super Bowl, and for those women to get their flowers and get that recognition. It takes moments like that. It takes women being on social media talking about what they do for the next generation to know that this job exists.

“I didn’t know that this job existed. I had an incredible mentor in Jill Smoller, and I kind of stalked her, I tracked her down so that I could pick her brain as much as possible. But it’s incredible to see that there are a lot more women doing this now.”

It felt somewhat fitting that it would be Mahomes and Hurts to contend last season’s Super Bowl, two years on from their first meeting in the NFL’s showpiece climax. Two of the most polished, conscious and articulate role models and advocates of ever-progressing inclusivity for which football and sport could ask.

“It’s incredible, it’s all natural to him [Mahomes],” said Dahl. “That’s just him speaking from the heart and what he’s passionate about.

“He’s married to Brittany Mahomes, who is incredible as well. She was the reason that they invested in the [NWSL team] Kansas City Current. And they brought the team to Kansas City, it was her first, and Patrick followed.

“But I think when you have a partnership like that, it’s pretty incredible to have those alliances together. It’s been amazing to see. And working with someone like Alex Morgan, who is just so inspiring.

“For being an advocate for women in sports, both on the field and off the field, they have a lot of similarities in that way of just using their platform to invest and truly put their money where their mouth is.”

As far as powerhouse unions go, Dahl and Mahomes evidently struck gold with one another as their respective careers blossom.

The latter has printed his name in NFL immortality, and he is far from finished.

“It’s incredible, it couldn’t be happening to a better person, a better human, a better husband and dad [than Mahomes], he’s just an all-around superstar.

“And so to be alongside him for the journey, it’s a true honour. And sometimes I like look up and I’m like, ‘is this really happening’ when I’m sitting there watching him win another Super Bowl.

“He’s just incredible and such an advocate for the game, such an advocate for women. And yeah, just really proud to be along for the journey with him.”

The Patrick Mahomes of flag… coming to an Olympic stage near you.

Sky Sports NFL’s new series ‘NFL to the World’ shines a light on stories of how American Football has expanded beyond the borders of the United States.

Part One: Meet the man leading Wheelchair American Football’s Paralympic dream

Meet Geraint Griffiths, the man leading Wheelchair American Football’s pursuit of a dream place at the Paralympic Games.

Part Two: The NFL Academy dancer who escaped Nigeria’s violent ‘trenches’

Benson Jerry. The kid with the fancy footwork. The kid that borrowed 30p for the bus. The kid that had never tried lasagne. The kid that had never flown. The no-longer-a-kid becoming the inspiration kids like him never had.

Part Three: How Ireland became a powerhouse for the NFL’s global expansion

They support in unwavering numbers, they amplify at bar-raising levels, they romanticise their sporting legacy, they immerse themselves in football, they unite to champion their stage like few others, they welcome the world, and they kick; boy, can they kick. Ireland has become a rousing cocktail for the sport’s international growth and one of football’s most multi-faceted homes from home.

Part Four: From the beaches to the world… Meet the face of Brazilian football

Gabi Bankhardt is Samba. She is Bossa Nova. She is Christ the Redeemer and she is Carnival. She is the favelas. She is churrasco and she is Copacabana. She is mutirão.

We meet Brazil Flag Football ambassador Gabi Bankhardt as she inspires football’s explosion in Latin America.

Part Five: ‘I was Verstappen’s teammate – now I play American football around the world’

A tantalising thought of what could have been may always linger in the background for Samuel Oram-Jones. But there are few on the planet who can say they share his story. That’s even before Japanese karaoke…

Watch the 2025 NFL season live on Sky Sports, including every London and European game as well as every minute of the playoffs and Super Bowl LX; Get Sky Sports or stream with no contract on NOW.