Darrell “Housh” Doucette, quarterback for the U.S. national flag football team, couldn't help but feel upset about a promotional video that circulated online shortly after the 2024 Summer Olympics concluded in Paris.
The video shows NFL superstar quarterback Jalen Hurts lighting a football and tossing it into the torch towering over the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, igniting the Olympic Flame, before Philadelphia Eagles players turn, look into the camera and say, with straight faces, “It's our turn now,” before reminding viewers via text that men's and women's flag football — a younger cousin to Hurts' specialty tackling sport — will make its debut on the Olympic program in Los Angeles 2028.
Sitting recently at a coffee shop near his hometown of New Orleans, Doucette said the only way to interpret the video was as a threat to his job: Hurts was apparently declaring his intention to signal for Team USA, the world champion flag football team, at the next Summer Olympics.
But Doucette made it clear he had no intention of simply relinquishing the status he has earned in relative, but gradually, obscurity in the distinctly different version of football he has spent years promoting in other countries.
“I think it's disrespectful for them to automatically assume that because they're human they're eligible to be on the Olympic team. They didn't contribute to the growth of the sport to get to the Olympics,” Doucette said. “They should pay tribute to the people who helped make the sport what it is.”
Doucette said he's open to NFL stars trying to steal spots from him and his peers, who have equally bright dreams of gold medal glory. He just wants to make sure Hurts and his peers know that flag football powerhouses aren't going down without a fight.
“You don't expect them to go on the field and make the Olympic team because of their name,” he said. “They still have to go on the field and compete.”
Doucette's comments are some of the first to pour cold water on the idea of the NFL putting together a Dream Team for the Flags debut, similar to the squad of NBA legends that debuted in Barcelona in 1992.
Hurts isn't the only great pitcher tossing his helmet through the ring. In an episode of the training camp documentary series “Hard Knocks,” Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, the top pick in April's draft, expressed a desire to pitch for Team USA in Los Angeles, the same city where he won the Heisman Trophy while at the University of Southern California.
A few weeks before the opening ceremonies in Paris, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow appeared on the Pardon My Take podcast and fantasized about winning a flag football gold medal with his friends, NFL star wide receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson. “I'd love to play on 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 awesome.”
Doucette acknowledges that under different circumstances he would be a big supporter of an all-star team captained by Burrow. Like nearly everyone in New Orleans, he was thrilled to see Burrow, Jefferson and Chase lead Louisiana State University's football team to the college national championship in 2019. He lives near the high school where Chase began making a name for himself on the tackle football gridiron.
But Doucette is confident he and others like him around the world are more than capable of competing with the NFL's best.
Whether tucking the ball in and running it himself or passing, Doucette quarterbacked the U.S. to the 2021 World Championships in Jerusalem, where the U.S. defeated Mexico, 44-41, in the final. He helped the national team win gold at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama. And in the summer of 2023, he was named Most Valuable Player as the U.S. went 7-0 and won the Americas Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Darrell Haush-Doucette was named MVP at the 2023 Americas Flag Football Championship in Charlotte, N.C., where the U.S. won the championship. Photo: Courtesy of Darrell Haush-Doucette
He and the United States will head to Lahti, Finland, to defend their world championship against 31 other teams from six continents in a four-day tournament that begins Aug. 27.
But before that, Doucette had perhaps the most famous win of his career: In 2018, he led his amateur team to the championship, defeating a team made up of former NFL players on national television.
The team of former pros included Pro Bowl running back Justin Forsett and former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Seneca Wallace, and was coached by four-time Olympic gold medalist sprinter Michael Johnson. The Doucette team overpowered the pros not only with their speed, but also with play fakes that are not standard in the tackle game, lateral passes, passes that looked like runs, and even a 100-yard interception return. The team lost by 20 points.
The win earned Doucette and his team a $1 million prize, and they named themselves Team Fights Cancer to honor their loved ones battling the disease.
Reflecting on that day, Coach Doucette said it was a clear example of how an 11-on-11 tackle setup with pads and helmets on is different from a 7-on-7 version in which a defender tries to stop the ball carrier by grabbing the flag strip around his waist.
“There are some plays that are called trick plays in the NFL, we're used to seeing them on a daily basis,” said Doucette, whose nickname “Housh” came from his resemblance to former NFL player TJ Houshmandzadeh.
Doucette, 35, acknowledged that his path to the national team was unconventional. The son of a former New Orleans police homicide detective well known to fans of the true-crime documentary series “The First 48” and whose namesake Doucette played track and football as a child.
One of his first athletic successes was winning a state championship in bowling, and he never pursued tackle football at the collegiate or pro levels because, at 5-foot-7, he was shorter than the prototype for his preferred position, quarterback.
His passion for flag football began in the intramural league at Xavier University in New Orleans, where he attended, and since then, he has proven himself good enough to be selected as a “core” player for teams in Dallas, Nashville, Boston and Las Vegas in the professional men's American Flag Football League division tentatively scheduled to launch in 2025.
He has also coached and conducted clinics for fellow flag lovers overseas, including in China and Mexico, whose second-placed team will be hoping to beat him in Finland.
Doucette's success on the field, and that of female soccer sensations such as Mexico's Diana Flores and American Vanita Crouch, have led to a corresponding rise in social media influence and following.
Doucette even hinted at plans to introduce Hausch-branded merchandise, especially if the U.S. wins the world championships.
He feels there's a market for him in the vibrant world of flag football that he's always been a part of, but he also knows that a breakout in front of a global audience at the Olympics could make him a new football star whose imagination has yet to be fated.
Doucette made it clear he doesn't think he deserves that step up, but he firmly believes he deserves a chance to fight for his ambitions against any challenger, including players with NFL pedigrees.
“We don't need these guys,” Doucette said of the league's Olympic hopefuls, “because we already have good players on our team.”
