EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. -- The call arrived late on a Friday in January, and it sent Shaun Hill into the kind of frenzy that prompts a man to act out his passion. The recreation league in his hometown planned to replace tackle football with the flag version for its youngest players, and Hill wanted his voice heard.

Everyone needed to know that -- yes, actually -- the initiative had his full support. After 25 years in the game, including 15 as an NFL quarterback, Hill felt compelled to address football's uncertain future with common sense, realism and, most importantly for him, optimism.

After putting his two young sons to bed, Hill retreated to his basement. He sat at his computer and pecked out a 1,600-word letter of support that proved a key factor in the Parsons, Kansas, Recreation Commission's decision to offer flag football for third- and fourth-graders before shifting them to tackle in fifth grade. Hill, in fact, will sponsor the league, which means that any Parsons child in that age group who signs up can play for free.

"It's very obvious that a kid's maximum potential is exactly the same, whether you play tackle or whether you play flag at that age," said Hill, who is entering his second season with the Minnesota Vikings. "But one of them has inherently less risk, so that's the one that, to me, makes the most sense.

"Also, to me, it's a preservation thing for this game. We're really losing a lot of kids to other sports, and they just don't come back later on. So this is an opportunity to give those kids an outlet to play football and to learn the game if maybe their parents are holding them out.

"I love this game. And that's part of the reason we're doing this: to try to preserve it. There's a lot of bad press out there about it. I think the more opportunities we give kids to play it in a safe manner, the better it will be for the game going forward."

Hill, 36, is like many successful NFL role players. He has made it this far not just on talent but also by keeping his head down and his opinions to himself. A conversation this week at the Vikings' facility, however, revealed a passion and the kind of rational action plan that leads to progress rather than just public debate.

We tend to view the future of football in antiseptic settings, from research labs to courtrooms to boardrooms. Make no mistake: Medicine, law and money are all part of the issue. Ultimately, though, the issue might be decided in places such as Parsons, Kansas, amid relatively small steps from reasonable people such as Shaun Hill.

This town of 10,000 has been torn by the same debate taking place around the country. Gary Crissman, executive director of the Parsons Recreation Commission, said the topic at board meetings became unavoidable among "all the media onslaught about concussions happening in the world right now."

Crissman traveled to a number of regional football safety meetings, and eventually, the flag football idea surfaced. Crissman expects 100 to 140 kids to sign up for flag, even though an alternative league in town will continue to offer tackle at the third- and fourth-grade levels. According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, flag football participation among children ages 6-14 grew by 8.7 percent between 2014 and 2015. The sport had 1,669,000 participants in 2015, compared to 2,169,000 for tackle football.

"We had the idea, we called Shaun, and he was supportive right away," Crissman said. "It was very important around here to have national and professional validity to what we were talking about. Without his support, I don't know where this would have gone."

Hill has a long history of caution in youth football; his parents held him out until he was in sixth grade. He plans to follow a similar plan with his sons, who are currently 2 years and 6 months old. In his letter, he quoted two former teammates, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith and retired offensive lineman Dylan Gandy, who said they will do the same.

Further, Hill wrote, "the sentiment provided by my two colleagues and I aren't limited to just us. It is the feeling of a growing majority of men who live in this sport and understand it best."

That qualifies as a remarkable shift in thinking by many in football's middle class. As an institution, football has defended itself, often stubbornly and blindly, against perceived "attacks" that are in reality legitimate questions about safety. Hill's long-term vision is a compromise of sorts: Expand the Parsons flag program to fifth- and sixth-grade levels and thus build a structure in which tackling begins in middle school and the vast majority of those who play are limited to six years in the game.

That paradigm eliminates concerns about training for youth coaches, which varies widely based on locality, and focuses it on the middle- and high-school programs. In our conversation, Hill ticked off a series of other advantages to the flag format -- more games can be played; all kids can be ball carriers, regardless of size; less money must be spent on equipment -- and suggested it provides a better environment to teach tackling technique for later use.

"The basis for good tackling comes from good body position, being under control, dropping your hips and looking at the ball carrier's hips," he said. "Well, that's what you're doing in flag football in order to pull a flag. So we're building a foundation for being a good tackler later without the contact of it."

You can't overemphasize the importance of active NFL players in this space. Part of this debate inevitably will include doctors, lawyers and advocates yelling over one another. But it can also embrace people within the game itself, those who have experienced its rewards yet accept that changes must occur to guarantee a future.

Flag football isn't a magic solution for football's ailments. But it can be part of the process to merge the indisputable dangers of the game with its merit at acceptable risk levels.

"To me," Hill said, "this makes perfect sense."

Indeed, this is how real work gets done.