Flag football world champion ready to battle NFL talent for U.S. Olympic spot | NFL

DArielle “Housh” Doucette, the quarterback of the U.S. national flag football team, couldn’t help but be outraged by the hype video that circulated on the Internet shortly after the end of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

The clip showed NFL superstar quarterback Jalen Hurts lighting a football on fire and throwing it into the torch above the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, lighting the Olympic flame. Then the Philadelphia Eagles face turned, stared into the camera and said with a serious expression, “Now it's our turn,” before text reminded viewers that men's and women's flag football – a younger cousin of the tackle format in which Hurts plies his trade – would make its debut on the Olympic program at the 2028 LA Games.

Sitting recently in a cafe near his hometown of New Orleans, Doucette said the only way he could interpret the video was as a threat to his job. Hurts had apparently declared his intention to call the signals for Team USA – the reigning world champions in flag football – at the next Summer Games.

But Doucette made it clear that he had no intention of simply giving up his place in relative (but dwindling) anonymity, in a demonstrably different version of football that he has been spreading in other countries for years.

“I think it's disrespectful that they automatically assume that they can make the Olympic team because of who they are – they didn't help this game get to the Olympics,” Doucette said. “Think about the people who helped this game get to where it is today.”

Doucette said he can accept that NFL stars will try to take roster spots away from him and his teammates, whose gold medal dreams are just as bright, and he just wants to make sure Hurts and his ilk know that the flag football legends aren't going down without a fight.

“We just don't think they're going to go out there and make the Olympic team because of the name, right?” he said. “They still have to go out there and compete.”

Doucette's comments are among the first to question the idea that the NFL would field a “dream team” for the flag's debut that would resemble the roster of NBA legends that debuted at the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

Hurts isn't the only player with a strong throw to throw his helmet in the ring. In an episode of the training camp docuseries “Hard Knocks,” Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, the top pick in April's draft, expressed his desire to throw for Team USA in LA – the same city where he won the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player in Southern California.

A few weeks before the opening ceremony in Paris, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow appeared on the “Pardon My Take” podcast and dreamed of winning gold in flag football alongside his friends and NFL star wide receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson. “I really want to play for the Olympic flag football team,” Burrow said, echoing similar comments from MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes and receiving yards leader Tyreek Hill. “I think that would be really cool.”

Doucette acknowledges that under different circumstances, he would support an all-star team led by Burrow. Like virtually everyone else in New Orleans, he was thrilled when Burrow, Jefferson and Chase led the Louisiana State University football team to the 2019 national collegiate championship. He even lives near the high school where Chase began to make a name for himself in tackle football.

But Doucette is convinced that he and similar players around the world can more than keep up with the best in the NFL.

Whether he was tucking the ball in to run or passing it off, Doucette led the United States at quarterback to the 2021 World Cup in Jerusalem, where the Americans defeated Mexico 44-41 in the final. He helped the national team win a gold medal at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama. And in the summer of 2023, he was named Most Valuable Player when the United States won the Americas Continental Championship 7-0 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He and the U.S. are scheduled to travel to Lahti, Finland, to defend their world title against 31 teams from six continents in a four-day tournament that begins Aug. 27.

But before that, Doucette had perhaps the most famous victory of his career. In 2018, he led an amateur team to a championship that defeated – on national television – a team made up of former NFL players.

The team of ex-pros included Pro Bowl running back Justin Forsett and former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Seneca Wallace. Their coach was four-time Olympic gold medalist and sprinter Michael Johnson. And they lost by 20 points to a team led by Doucette that overwhelmed the pros not only with speed but also with things that are not quite normal in the tackle game: constant feints, lateral passes, passes disguised as runs – and even a 100-yard interception return that led to the win.

The victory came with a prize of $1 million for Doucette and his compatriots, who called themselves “Team Fighting Cancer” in honor of their loved ones battling the disease.

Looking back on that day, Doucette said it was clear evidence of how different the 11-on-11 tackling configuration, with protective gear and helmets, is from the 7-on-7 version, where defenders try to stop the ball carrier by snatching the flag strips on his hip.

“Some of the things they do in the NFL that they call trick plays? We're used to seeing them on a daily basis,” said Doucette, whose nickname Housh comes from his resemblance to former NFL player TJ Houshmandzadeh.

Doucette, 35, acknowledged that his path to the national team was unconventional. The son and namesake of a former New Orleans Police Department homicide detective known to fans of the true-crime docuseries “The First 48,” Doucette was an athlete and played football as a youth.

One of his first competitive successes was winning the national bowling championship. And he never played tackle football at the college or professional level because, at 5'7″, he is shorter than the prototype for his preferred position of quarterback.

His passion for flag football grew out of a collegiate league at Xavier University in New Orleans, where he studied. And since then, he has not only proven that he is talented enough to be selected as a “core player” for the professional division of the men's American Flag Football League, which is expected to be formed in 2025 with teams in Dallas, Nashville, Boston and Las Vegas.

He has also worked as a coach, running courses abroad for other flag supporters, including in China and Mexico – whose second-place team hopes to beat him in Finland.

Doucette's performances on the field, along with those of two female sensations, Diana Flores of Mexico and Vanita Krouch of the USA, have led to a corresponding increase in their influence and following on social media.

So much so that Doucette hinted at plans to release a line of Housh-branded merchandise, especially if the World Championships go in the USA's favor.

He senses there is a market for it in the vibrant flag football scene he is part of. But he also knows that his breakthrough at the Olympics – in front of a global audience – could bring him a new level of football fame that he cannot yet imagine.

Doucette made it clear that he does not feel entitled to this promotion. However, he firmly believes that he deserves the chance to fight for his ambitions against all challengers, even those with NFL experience.

“It's not like we need these guys,” Doucette said of the league's Olympic hopefuls. “Because with the ones we have, we're already great.”