One Writer’s Humble Pitch for a Player-Media Super Bowl 5K

Myles Garrett would rip my head off. If you put me under center—or, frankly, even in shotgun—it would take him something like 2.6 seconds to dislodge each of my ribs and deposit my lifeless body onto the turf.

But that’s on the football field. I think if you gave me a lot more space, and maybe put me in a noncontact jersey like quarterbacks wear during practice, I could keep the NFL’s new single-season sack record holder off my tail. If I’m being perfectly honest, although I’d be a little afraid to say this in his presence, I think Myles would eat my dust.

I am basing this on the most scientific research tool known to man: a tweet from five-plus years ago. At the height of the pandemic, July 2020, Garrett shared the following: “My best time in a 5K is 27:36, what’s yours?”

My best time in a 5K is 27:36, what’s yours? Register in the Run with the Pro Virtual 5K & join Team Cleveland to help raise money for a cause close to my heart - the Alzheimer’s Association. You can win a zoom call with me! Sign up at https://t.co/bjeOsLIhJR 🤟🏾#runwiththepro pic.twitter.com/82mc7U9hNK
— Myles Garrett (@Flash_Garrett) July 17, 2020

Well, Mr. Garrett, not to brag, but I was clocked at the November 2025 Newton (Mass.) Turkey Trot running a 23:51, which comes out to a 7:40/mile pace. So while you’d probably best me in arm wrestling, table-tennis, bowling and nearly any other athletic competition you can think of, distance running may be the one area where I could come out on top.

I’m down for a race if you are.

“I don’t even know if I have a good pair of running shoes,” Puka Nacua told me at radio row before last year’s Super Bowl. “If they’re not like lifting workout shoes, I don’t think I have them.”

I’ve been asking around. Because this idea of running against NFL players has stuck with me. The summer after Jason Kelce retired, he ran a 43:10 in a 5K to benefit the Eagles Autism Foundation. Even if Garrett has shaved four minutes off his time in five years, I know I can beat Kelce.

So here’s my idea: A 5K during Super Bowl week, open to active players and credentialed media. For charity, of course.

Does Nacua ever go out and run a few miles? “No, I wish,” he said. “Sadly, I don’t.”

Would he give it a go if there was an official event while he’s already in town for NFL Honors and various Super Bowl week festivities? “100%,” he said. “I think if everybody’s getting involved with it, yeah. And I could get a good workout in? Yeah, 100%. That would be like a challenge, if I could actually be in shape for it, so I think it could be kind of exciting.”

The idea is even more feasible now that the league has moved the Pro Bowl Games to the Super Bowl host city, bringing more of the game’s best players to the same destination as the media contingent that covers the league.

And Nacua is far from the only big-name player who’d be willing to lace up his sneakers and meet me at the starting line.

“I’m a big runner,” Maxx Crosby told me at last year’s radio row (well before his recent knee surgery). “I always—talk about conditioning—I feel like I probably run more than anybody at my position. I ran 10 miles in Miami one time. I thought I was gonna die, but I did it.”

Unfortunately, the five-time Pro Bowler didn’t know what his time was in the 10-miler or would be for a 5K. But I asked whether he’s ready to run against me and Puka. “S---, I’m not scared to run a 5K. For a good cause? Yeah.”

“I’d do it,” said 2024 Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain II, who ran track growing up. “I’m not as in track shape as I was back then, but I still try to get out there on the track. I’ve never been a long-distance runner, but I would definitely do it.”

I think there’s something amusing about this sort of Pros vs. Joes–style competition, for those who remember the show that had everyday people trying to cover Jerry Rice on a fade route or tackle Ricky Williams. It’s the same appeal that has people watching celebrity golf tournaments or sitting up in their chairs at a basketball arena when a fan attempts a half-court shot between quarters.

Rich Eisen has clearly tapped into something with his Run Rich Run 40-yard dash, which he started doing at the NFL combine and now holds at the Rose Bowl. He has generated a ton of attention and raised more than $7 million for St. Jude’s. So why not throw in a few dozen NFL stars and an extra 5,000 yards or so?

Maxx Crosby folds his arms and strikes a pose. — Maxx Crosby says he once ran 10 miles in Miami, and that he wouldn’t be afraid to run a 5K against players and media. | Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

The big question: Just how competitive would this Player-Media Super Bowl 5K get? One thing I know is that plenty of media folks would be in.

“Last year in New Orleans was probably my most productive running week ever during a Super Bowl,” said Lindsay Jones, a senior editor at The Ringer and former president of the PFWA. “I think I ran right around 30 miles that week.”

Lindsay, like Surtain, grew up running track, though she transitioned into distance running as an adult and has now completed six marathons.

“I’m down,” she said. “Any time we can get more people running, the better.”

I asked about her 5K time and she said she ran a 24:02 about a month after the 2024 New York City Marathon—when she was in shape, but hadn’t been training for a 5K.

“Any time it’s a sprint, I don’t think I have a chance against any professional athlete,” she said. “But distance running is a different beast. It would be interesting to see over the course of a whole race. The longer we go, the better chance I have.”

Lindsay often runs during Super Bowl week with my MMQB colleague Conor Orr, whom I follow on Strava and can attest is annoyingly fast.

“As someone who is deeply insecure about my athletic place in the world, having a competition that I think I could actually fare well in against a professional football player seems like a welcome thing for me,” he said. Conor’s marathon PR is a 3:17:58, a 7:33/mile pace. “I think the 5K is the great adult equalizer race. I would welcome all challengers on that front.”

While Lindsay says she’d probably be more competitive with her peers in the media, Conor says bring on the players. Some of those players may be in for a rude awakening. I asked Nacua if there were any members of the media he’d be excited to see on the starting line.

“I have confidence that I shouldn’t be in the same group as the media members running,” he said. “Just because I am an athlete, I should be able to beat them. So, respectfully, [and he paused a beat for emphasis] no.”

But he should know that Conor’s 5K PR, set two years ago, was an 18:38, a fraction of a second under a six-minute mile pace.

I asked Surtain the same question, whether there was anyone in the media he’d be excited to run against. He brought up one name: Zac Stevens, a Broncos beat reporter for DNVR. I felt like a boxing promoter getting Zac on the phone to share the news that he’d been called out.

“Right on!” Zac laughed. “I’m not really a long-distance runner. I mean, the most I do is 5K, really.”

That’s enough! But, unfortunately for Surtain, Zac is fast. He says he’s done plenty of 5Ks, with a PR of 19:40. And he’s up for another one come Super Bowl week. “Yeah, definitely. Especially being called out. I’d be thrilled to beat Pat and show him the way in a 5K.”

Like Conor (and me), he’s intrigued by the idea of measuring up against an NFL player.

“I love the idea,” Zac said. “These are world-class athletes, yet it’s something that the quote unquote normal person could be able to beat them in, in a physical event.”

While there is probably a small part of me writing this just to humblebrag about having completed my first marathon in May (marathon runners are obligated to tell you that they’ve run a marathon), this event I am conjuring should not be exclusive to the super-fast or the serious distance runners. This can be for everyone.

In February, the Dolphins host an annual event called the Dolphins Cancer Challenge, which includes a 5K and four bike races ranging from 13 miles to 99. Several members of the media who cover the team have taken part, including Marcel Louis-Jacques, a beat writer for ESPN NFL Nation.

About to take off at @TackleCancer — it’s not too late to donate!

DCC has raised $75 million for cancer research in 15 years; be part of the NFL’s largest fundraiser by donating at the link below ⬇️ https://t.co/zpvfPAbXqb pic.twitter.com/u89uyPZjMu
— Marcel Louis-Jacques (@Marcel_LJ) February 22, 2025

“I’m more of a ‘pick things up, put them down at the gym’ kinda guy,” Marcel told me. He ran the race for the first time in 2025, proudly finishing in 37:14 with a mix of running and walking. “I’d been doing CrossFit workouts, and thought, Yeah, let me use this as a barometer and see just how in shape I actually am. In order to actually run a 5K, no I was not ready.”

He says, like Nacua, he did not have proper footwear. And that he felt the race in his shins for months afterward.

“It’s humbling to an extent. Because everybody, when they talk about 5Ks, it’s always like, ‘Oh this is nothing. Compared to a marathon, this is easy.’ And I was like, ‘Bro, there’s no way I’m running this whole thing right now. I don’t have that in me.’”

But Marcel came out of the day raving about the experience, particularly the community aspect and the charity component. He says the DCC has been especially meaningful since the 2022 death of Jason Jenkins, the team’s longtime vice president of communications and community affairs, who was a champion of the event. The Dolphins’ community really comes together for it. Last year Tua Tagovailoa and Mike McDaniel walked the 5K together with their families, pushing kids in strollers.

“Part of our job as media is to humanize players,” Marcel said. “Football is such a Spartan sport, and you see all this gear every Sunday. Fans sometimes fail to see the human underneath. And I think that events like this where we get face-to-face time, we get shoulder-to-shoulder time, in an environment that’s not like us chasing a story or criticizing, it’s just like a chance to hang out. We don’t really get a whole lot of those. I think it would be good for morale, good for relationships.”

Conor shared a similar sentiment. “The reporter-athlete divide kind of breaks down on this idea that, You haven’t played and so you don’t understand. So I think exhibiting some feat of endurance that we’re actually good at would maybe help level the understanding gap. I’m not looking for that nod of approval. I’m just saying that it’s one of those things that might help us all get along a little better.”

When I originally conceived of the idea, I figured we’d limit the pool to players and media, partly for event size, plus safety and security concerns. I also like the wrinkle that so many of the people who work in media and populate radio row are recently retired players—from Kelce to Amazon’s Richard Sherman, who started sharing maps of his runs on social media in 2024.

But in talking to Marcel, I was swayed to find some way to involve fans. Maybe a small number of local fans, or fans of the Super Bowl teams, who enter through a lottery system or raise a certain amount for charity, could get a bib.

Now, there are some concerns. I spoke about the idea with a member of one team’s strength and conditioning staff, and he said he absolutely does not advise players to do distance running. It is a different kind of training than the preparation you do for 60 or 70 short, explosive runs during the course of an NFL game.

It’s easy for me to say, “What’s the big deal about a 20- or 30-minute run?” when I don’t have millions of dollars or the fate of an NFL franchise on the line. The last thing the league needs is a star player going down with a noncontact injury à la Robert Edwards playing flag football on the beach at the 1999 Pro Bowl. And the last thing I need is a paper trail showing it was sort of my fault.

I’ll also be the first to admit the event loses virtually all of its mass appeal if it’s just a media 5K without the athletes. So we’d have to figure that part out, probably with liability waivers and team insurance policies in place. (Maybe that will be less of a hurdle now that teams are granting permission for stars to play flag football in Saudi Arabia?)

But if we could work that part out, I think it’s a perfect event to add to the lineup of a week that is already basically built around manufacturing opportunities for TV and online content.

At the end of the day, I do think for a lot of people it would be about fun more than competition. “I think it would be funny to compete with an active player,” Marcel said. “Unfortunately, these guys are explosive athletes and are used to expending a ton of energy in short periods of time. So I think a sprint to the finish, something’s gonna trigger in their head that I don’t have in mine, and I’m gonna get dusted. So give me a media member on the final stretch.”

“I’d try to keep my pace,” Surtain said. “I mean, 5K is the distance. I’m not trying to run the full race very fast. I’m more worried about myself, to get through it [than racing other people].”

But even if folks go into the day knowing their limitations, many people in both camps have that switch they wouldn’t be able to turn off.

“There’s a competitive edge in everybody,” Nacua told me. “So I think you get them in the right setting, you’ll for sure bring it out.”

I hope the NFL gives us a chance to.

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