World flag soccer champ able to battle NFL abilities for US Olympics spot | NFL

Darrell “Housh” Doucette, the quarterback of the US’s nationwide flag soccer group, couldn’t assist however be offended on the hype video circulating on-line shortly after the 2024 summer season Olympics wrapped in Paris.

The clip confirmed the celebrity NFL quarterback Jalen Hurts lighting a soccer on fireplace, tossing it into the torch looming over the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and igniting the Olympic flame. Then, the face of the Philadelphia Eagles rotated, stared into the digital camera, and deadpanned, “It’s our flip,” earlier than textual content reminded viewers that males’s and girls’s flag soccer – a youthful cousin to the sort out format the place Hurts plies his commerce – would make its debut on the Olympics program for the 2028 LA Video games.

Sitting in a espresso store close to his house city New Orleans not too long ago, Doucette mentioned the one means for him to interpret the video was a risk to his job. Hurts had seemingly declared his intention to name the alerts for Crew USA – flag soccer’s defending world champions – on the subsequent summer season Video games.

However Doucette made clear he had no intention of merely surrendering the place he has earned for himself, in relative (however waning) anonymity, in a demonstrably completely different model of soccer that he has spent years spreading to different nations.

“I feel it’s disrespectful that they simply mechanically assume that they’re in a position to simply be a part of the Olympic group due to the person who they’re – they didn’t assist develop this sport to get to the Olympics,” Doucette mentioned. “Give the blokes who helped this sport get to the place it’s at their respect.”

Doucette says he can settle for NFL headliners making an attempt to grab roster spots from him and his brethren, whose goals of gold medal glory burn simply as brightly. He simply desires to make sure Hurts and his ilk know that the flag soccer stalwarts aren’t taking place and not using a battle.

“We simply don’t assume they’re going to have the ability to stroll on the sphere and make the Olympic group due to the title, proper?” he mentioned. “They nonetheless need to go on the market and compete.”

Doucette’s remarks are a number of the first to throw chilly water on the thought of the NFL fielding a Dream Crew for flag’s debut that may be akin to the squad of NBA legends who premiered on the 1992 Barcelona Video games.

Hurts isn’t the one huge arm to throw his helmet within the ring. On an episode of the coaching camp docuseries Laborious Knocks, the Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, the highest draft decide in April’s draft, expressed his want to throw for Crew USA in LA – the identical metropolis the place he received the Heisman trophy for school soccer’s greatest participant whereas at Southern California.

A few weeks earlier than the opening ceremony in Paris, the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow appeared on the Pardon My Take podcast and fantasized about clinching flag soccer gold alongside Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson, his pals and star NFL broad receivers. “I actually wish to play for the Olympic flag soccer group,” Burrow mentioned, echoing comparable remarks from the MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes in addition to receiving-yards chief Tyreek Hill. “I feel it’d be actually cool.”

Doucette concedes that, below completely different circumstances, he’d be all for an all-star group captained by Burrow. Like just about everybody else in New Orleans, he was thrilled to look at Burrow, Jefferson and Chase lead Louisiana State College’s soccer group to the faculty nationwide championship in 2019. He even lives near the highschool the place Chase started making a reputation for himself on the sort out soccer gridiron.

However Doucette is assured he, and gamers like him around the globe, can greater than maintain their very own in opposition to the NFL’s greatest.

Whether or not tucking the ball to run it himself or passing it, Doucette quarterbacked the US to the 2021 world championship in Jerusalem, the place the People defeated Mexico within the closing 44-41. He helped the nationwide group to a gold medal on the 2022 World Video games in Birmingham, Alabama. And in the summertime of 2023, he was designated most respected participant because the US went 7-0 to seize the Americas Continental championship in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He and the US are scheduled to journey to Lahti, Finland, to defend their world championship in opposition to 31 groups from six continents at a four-day event starting 27 August.

However, sooner than all of that, Doucette collected maybe probably the most well-known win of his profession. In 2018, he guided a championship-winning newbie squad that – on nationwide tv – topped a aspect made up of former NFL gamers.

The group of ex-professionals included the Professional Bowl working again Justin Forsett, and former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Seneca Wallace. Their coach was the four-time Olympic gold medalist sprinter Michael Johnson. And so they misplaced by 20 factors to a Doucette-led group that overwhelmed the professionals not solely with velocity however issues that aren’t fairly commonplace within the sort out sport: fixed playfakes, laterals, passes disguised as runs – and even a scoring, 100-yard interception return.

The victory resulted in a $1m prize for Doucette and his compatriots, who named themselves Crew Combating Most cancers to honor family members battling the sickness.

Reflecting on that day, Doucette mentioned it was as clear an indication as there may be for a way completely different the 11-on-11, pads-and-helmets sort out configuration is from the seven-on-seven model, the place defenders attempt to cease ball carriers by snatching flag strips at their hips.

“A number of the issues that they do within the NFL that they name trick performs? We’re accustomed to seeing them on an on a regular basis foundation,” mentioned Doucette, whose nickname Housh derives from his resemblance to ex-NFL participant TJ Houshmandzadeh.

Doucette, 35, acknowledged that his pathway to the nationwide group was unconventional. The son and namesake of a former New Orleans police murder detective recognized to followers of the true crime docuseries The First 48, Doucette ran observe and performed soccer as a teenager.

Certainly one of his earliest aggressive successes was successful state championships in bowling. And he didn’t pursue sort out soccer on the collegiate or professional ranges as a result of – at 5ft, 7in – he’s shorter than the prototype for his most popular place of quarterback.

His ardour for flag soccer grew out of an intramural league at New Orleans’s Xavier College, the place he studied. And since then, he not solely proved to be expert sufficient to be chosen as a “core” participant for the skilled males’s American Flag Soccer League division tentatively set to launch in 2025 with groups in Dallas, Nashville, Boston and Las Vegas.

He has additionally coached and carried out clinics overseas for fellow flag devotees, together with in China and Mexico – whose second-ranked group is hoping to upset him in Finland.

The on-field exploits of Doucette, in addition to these of girls’s sensations Diana Flores of Mexico and Vanita Krouch of the US, have introduced a corresponding enhance by way of social media affect and followers.

A lot in order that Doucette hinted at plans to unveil a line of Housh-branded merchandise, particularly if issues on the world championships go the US’s means.

He senses a marketplace for it among the many vibrant flag soccer scene to which he has belonged. However he additionally is aware of breaking out at an Olympics – earlier than a world viewers – may include a brand new soccer stardom that he can’t but fathom.

Doucette made it clear he doesn’t really feel entitled to that step up. Nonetheless, he does consider – firmly – that he deserves the prospect to battle for these ambitions in opposition to all comers, together with these with an NFL pedigree.

“It’s not that we’d like these guys,” Doucette mentioned of the league’s Olympic hopefuls. “As a result of we’re already nice with who we have now.”