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N.F.L. teams usually see red when a penalty flag is thrown. This Sunday at MetLife Stadium, they’ll see pink.

At the suggestion of an 11-year-old boy from New Jersey, the N.F.L. will use pink penalty flags in the Jets’ home game against the Miami Dolphins. Dante Cano, a fifth grader from Marlboro, N.J., was watching a game the first weekend in October with his father, Jose – probably a Giants game, his mother, Laurie, said. It was the first weekend of the N.F.L.’s monthlong campaign to promote breast cancer awareness and Cano wondered, with players wearing pink cleats, towels and hats, why the league did not turn pink the one item that is used most during games: penalty flags.

Cano wrote a letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell on lined notebook paper asking if the league could use his idea. “Please write back,” he wrote in closing.

“My 14-year-old daughter is multiply handicapped, and she’s been sick lately,” Laurie Cano said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “Both of my younger children make a lot of wishes and dreams. You never want to smash those hopes and dreams. When he writes a letter, you give him a stamp and put it in the mail.”

On Tuesday someone from Marlboro’s recreation department – where Dante plays flag football and soccer — called the Cano home, saying the N.F.L. was trying to reach them. The whole family is going to the Jets’ game Sunday, where they will meet Goodell and present the penalty flags to officials before the game.

“I’m more shocked than he is,” Laurie Cano said. “He’s surprised they’re using it this year.”

The N.F.L., in the meantime, put in an order last Friday to have Officials’ Flags ‘N Bags USA, a family-owned supplier of penalty flags in Sarasota, Fla., make a batch in pink. It will be the first time since 1965 that the N.F.L. is using anything but yellow. They arrived at the league office Wednesday.

“When I need party favors, I guess I need to call the N.F.L.,” Laurie Cano said.