Globalization’s Favorite Wide Receiver: Juju Smith-Schuster and the Absurd, Borderless Theater of NFL Stardom By Our Correspondent in Five Time Zones Simultaneously Somewhere between a TikTok dance in Pittsburgh and a quiet endorsement deal in Lagos, Juju Smith-Schuster became the world’s most accidentally successful soft-power export since K-pop. The man has never filed a trade…
Kareem Hunt, the human highlight reel who once looked like the second coming of Gale Sayers, has become a sort of peripatetic morality play touring the world’s gridirons. While Americans debate whether he deserves yet another “second chance,” the rest of the planet watches with the detached curiosity usually reserved for U.S. primary elections or…
Los Angeles, 2024 – On a planet where 828 million people went to bed hungry last night, 70,240 souls inside SoFi Stadium paid an average of 213 U.S. dollars to watch a football team that does not actually reside in Los Angeles lose to Baltimore in a sport that still insists on calling itself “football”…
Montez Sweat: The Defensive End Exporting American Anxiety to a World Already on Edge By the time Montez Sweat was traded from the Chicago Bears to the Washington Commanders last October, the planet had already endured two years of pandemic, spiraling inflation, and the creeping realization that every smartphone notification might herald either a missile…
The Gladiators of Santa Clara: How a 49ers Game Became a Global Mood Ring By Our Correspondent, still jet-lagged from the last apocalypse SANTA CLARA—Somewhere between the Caspian Sea evaporating and the yen staging a one-currency rebellion, the San Francisco 49ers took the field on Sunday and, for three merciful hours, allowed the planet to…
The Accidental Diplomat: How Case Keenum Became the NFL’s Only Functioning Global Institution By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk In a world where multilateralism is collapsing faster than a European bank on a Friday afternoon, we have—against all odds—found a rare example of sustained international cooperation: Case Keenum’s passport stamp collection. Yes, the journeyman quarterback best…
The Curious Case of D.J. Moore: How a 190-Pound American Gladiator Quietly Became the Canary in Globalization’s Coal Mine By Matteo “Macabre” Moretti, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker From the air-conditioned war rooms of NFL analytics departments to the sweat-soaked living rooms of Lagos, Nigeria—where Monday-morning quarterbacks stream games off sketchy websites—D.J. Moore has become an…
The World According to Miles Sanders A dispatch from the global bureau of running backs, currency fluctuations, and existential dread. By the time Miles Sanders ripped off a 42-yard touchdown against the Bears last season, the yen had already slipped to a 34-year low and a container of kimbap in Seoul cost more than a…
CeeDee Lamb and the Global Theater of Catch-and-Release By The Foreign Desk, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the neon shrine of JerryWorld and the algorithmic bowels of TikTok, CeeDee Lamb—wide-receiver, reluctant fashion influencer, and occasional human piñata for defensive backs—has become the latest export in America’s ongoing experiment: turning kinetic talent into soft power. To the…
Gridiron Geopolitics: How the NFL Standings Quietly Rule the World Order By A. Correspondent, filing from a hotel bar in Singapore that still thinks the Patriots are the bad guys — The NFL’s weekly standings, for the uninitiated, look like a benign spreadsheet of wins, losses, and a few decimal points masquerading as science. But…
Max Brosmer and the Great Global Quarterback Shortage By Our Resident Cynic-at-Large, filing from an airport lounge that still smells of last week’s despair The planet is running out of quarterbacks. Not metaphorical ones—actual 6-foot-something Americans who can fling a leather ellipsoid sixty yards while evading 300-pound men with the ethical flexibility of payday lenders….
Dan Quinn’s Second Life: From Super-Bowl Collapse to Global Gridiron Diplomat By International Desk, Dave’s Locker Atlanta, Georgia—That Dan Quinn is again gainfully employed as an NFL head coach is either a testament to redemption narratives Americans can’t resist or proof that the league’s memory is shorter than a TikTok clip of a cat knocking…
