PARIS—Somewhere between the 17th arrondissement’s endless strikes and the existential dread hanging over the Seine like cheap cigarette smoke, the name Isaiah Foskey has begun to echo in the sort of bars where expats argue about American football as if it were a UN resolution. The irony, of course, is delicious: a pass-rusher from Walnut…
Daiyan Henley and the Global Supply Chain of Hope By the International Desk, Dave’s Locker PARIS—While delegates in Brussels argue over Russian gas pipelines and the UN Security Council debates who still has enough credibility left to chair a meeting, a 22-year-old linebacker from Los Angeles has become an unlikely pressure gauge for planetary anxiety….
Derrick Henry Is the Last Titan Standing While the World Runs Out of Running Backs—and Possibly Civilization Itself YULIN, CHINA—At 4:07 a.m. local time, while most of humanity was doom-scrolling about the next micro-war or the price of eggs, a 6-foot-3, 247-pound American running back named Derrick Henry was bench-pressing Buicks somewhere in Nashville. The…
ROME ODUNZE AND THE GLOBAL RELIGION OF VERTICAL LEAP Somewhere between the radioactive neon of Las Vegas and the more genteel smog of Seattle, a 6-foot-3 American human-torpedo named Rome Odunze has become the latest high priest in the worldwide cult of “game-breaking wideout.” To most of the planet—where football still means Lionel Messi and…
Global Dispatch: Justin Jefferson and the Mirage of Modern Stardom By Our Man in the End Zone, Somewhere between Reykjavik and Riyadh In the year when glaciers file for bankruptcy and TikTok diplomats negotiate cease-fires, it takes a 24-year-old wide-receiver from Louisiana to remind the planet that hope still sells—provided it runs a crisp 4.4-second…
Calvin Austin III, 5’9″ in cleats and 4.32 seconds from zero to existential dread, is the sort of human highlight reel who makes every passport-holding couch potato wonder why we bothered inventing the metric system. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ rookie wideout—fresh off Memphis tape that looks like it was sped up by an intern with a…
Calais Campbell, the 6’8″ American football colossus whose very name sounds like a French port town hosting a discount mattress sale, has announced his retirement after 17 seasons of politely rearranging the spines of quarterbacks. While this might register as mere “sports news” in the parochial corners of U.S. cable television, the reverberations ripple outward…
Najee Harris and the Global Cargo Cult of American Football By Our Man in the Cheap Seats It is a truth universally acknowledged—at least from the VIP boxes in Dallas to the betting kiosks in Macau—that the United States exports only three things with reliable profit margins: weapons-grade anxiety, Marvel plot twists, and the National…
