Like most athletes growing up, Ndamukong Suh studied his heroes.

He learned footwork from one of his idols. What Suh gleaned were subtle but brilliant moves—like how to use your feet to fake twice, in quick succession, like you‘re headed one way, before going the other.

“It helped me so much,” the star Detroit Lions pass rusher said.

But it wasn’t an American football player Suh was watching. It was Thierry Henry, who starred for European soccer giants Arsenal and Barcelona.

If you ask NFL scouts and decision makers what’s changing among the league’s younger standouts, it’s a different type of athleticism. That can be attributed, in part, to soccer. Those inside the game say that a young core of stars, all rooted in the beautiful game, have brought a new dimension to the NFL.