When I reach Brad Evans, he’s at a campground somewhere in Montana. The recently-retired Seattle Sounders and U.S. men’s national team defender is on an epic, year-long road trip, criss-crossing North America in an Airstream trailer. In a day or two, Evans and his wife will head northbound into the Canadian wilderness — but right now, Evans has cell service for the first time in three or four days, and he has a few minutes to chat.



Our conversation comes in the days following mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, two of a series of five such incidents that happened during an awful week in early August. Evans — along with a handful of other current and former MLS players — wasted little time in expressing their outrage at the situation on Twitter. Philadelphia Union midfielder Alejandro Bedoya famously offered his own commentary into a field-level microphone in the middle of a game.



I got a hold of Evans (and...