'I thought he was speaking gibberish': Untold stories of Amon-Ra St. Brown's German upbringing

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  Eric WoodyardNov 14, 2026, 06:00 AM ET

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  Eric Woodyard covers the Detroit Lions for ESPN. He joined ESPN in September 2019 as an NBA reporter dedicated to the Midwest region before switching to his current role in April 2021. The Flint, Mich. native is a graduate of Western Michigan University and has authored/co-authored three books: "Wasted," "Ethan's Talent Search" and "All In: The Kelvin Torbert Story". He is a proud parent of one son, Ethan.

DETROIT -- When the Detroit Lions take the field to face the New England Patriots at Allianz Arena in Munich on Sunday, wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown will feel right at home.

For St. Brown, Germany is as much his home as the United States. It's where he and his family frequently took trips to visit his maternal grandparents. It's where St. Brown went to preschool (Die Rheinpiraten Kindergarten, to be exact), and where he and his older brothers, Equanimeous and Osiris, spent countless hours on bike tours and fishing trips with their grandfather, Helmut Steyer, who enjoyed entertaining his American-born grandsons.

It's where Amon-Ra (and Osiris) was a standout for the country's under-19 national football team. It's where he has hosted football camps since becoming a pro in 2021. And it's where the Lions star was once asked by an uncle to stay in order to become a star in the other type of football.

"It's not strange to him. It's all familiar ... everything," St. Brown's mother, Miriam Brown, said. "Going to restaurants, everything is different but for him it's familiar."

The deep connection and familiarity St. Brown has with the country is because of Miriam. Born and raised in Leverkusen, in western Germany, she instilled her German values into Amon-Ra and his brothers, who are all fluent in German.

Those values, and experiences, are a part of St. Brown's identity and have always been at the forefront of who he is. As a result, when the Lions face the Patriots in one of the country's most famous arenas (9:30 a.m. ET on Fox), St. Brown will be the headline act.

More than 80 NFL players who were born in Germany (West Germany and East Germany included) have appeared in a game, per ESPN Research, including 10 who have debuted since 2018. Although he was born in Anaheim Hills, California, few have experienced as much popularity in Germany as St. Brown, who, according to NFL Germany general manager Alexander Steinforth, is the subject of multiple documentaries currently being produced there.

"He's probably the poster boy for the NFL in the German-speaking world these days," Steinforth told ESPN. "He works a lot and has worked a lot with our local broadcast partners, so it's amazing to see when he's kind of talking to his German fans. He's a really big and important name for us here in Germany."

St. Brown wears decals of both the German and American flags on his helmet. He says he's fortunate and proud to be so immersed in both cultures, each of which he has drawn from throughout his life.

"Being half German, half American you kind of get to experience both cultures, and you admire different things in both cultures," St. Brown said. "You feel as if, you know, some things you wish the Americans would do more, some things you wish the Germans would do more.

"But I'm both, so I can pick and choose what I like from each culture. And I think both cultures have amazing, amazing qualities. But I'm just glad that I was able to dip my feet into both cultures and be around both of them."

What does Germany really mean to St. Brown? These are stories that shed more light.

'Shoot the ball!'

Very early in St. Brown's eighth grade basketball season, coach Brian Liles began getting annoyed.

Liles, who was coaching in the National Junior Basketball youth league in Irvine, California, had taught the boys a pass-first style of hoops that he expected his Titans team to follow. But throughout the first four or five games, John Brown -- the father of a teenage Amon-Ra St. Brown -- was in the stands instructing his youngest son to do the complete opposite.

"Every time Amon-Ra got the ball, he would go, 'Shoot the ball! Shoot the ball!' After a while, I just walked over and I go, 'John, I'm trying to get him to pass the ball because the minute he gets the ball everybody swarms to him,'" Liles recalled. "Guys are open underneath the basket and if he makes the pass, we will be able to get an easy layup."

During the chat, Liles said Brown was kind and immediately receptive.

He said, "Oh yeah, sorry, Coach. I won't say anything else."

Liles said Brown held his tongue for the next few possessions. Then, suddenly, he heard him calling to his son again ... but in an unfamiliar language.

"I'm like, 'Is that German? I think he's talking in German.' And all of a sudden Amon-Ra starts shooting the basketball again," Liles said. "And I go, 'That son of a gun is telling him to shoot the ball in German!'

"So, he tried to outsmart me, but I picked it up."

Those interactions weren't uncommon for Amon-Ra and his brothers during their youth sports careers. Whether it was basketball, football or soccer, Brown was frequently on the sidelines delivering instructions in German.

They weren't always well received by his sons.

"This was in football specifically and my brother was in Pop Warner, and I think he was telling him to do some type of move," Osiris said. "He's like, 'Spin, spin.' And my brother, and even me, we all got annoyed that he kept yelling at us to do something.

"So, my brother got so frustrated that he would just do the move like when he didn't need to do it, just to do it. He's like, 'You want me to spin? Forget it, I'll spin' even when he wasn't near someone."

Brown said he learned enough German to deliver commands. He figured Liles, or anyone else, would never know what he was saying.

"I used that to my advantage, yeah," he said, laughing.

Summers in Leverkusen

As teenagers, word was starting to spread throughout Germany about the three brothers who lived in California and also held German citizenship.

The St. Brown brothers spent nearly every summer with Miriam Brown's family in Leverkusen. In 2015, Amon-Ra played for the German U-19 national American football team alongside Osiris.

Equanimeous, who was a freshman wide receiver at the University of Notre Dame at the time, didn't play, but the younger boys were happy to have each other for the trip.

"So, we go to the first game and it wasn't that many people in the stands," John Brown said. "I can't recall which country we played, but when we played France, Osiris got kicked out of the game because he got into a fight with a French guy because he did something to him and he said, 'I'm not going to let some French guy talk s--- to me.'"

Jürgen Siebmanns, team manager of the German junior national team, was responsible for recruiting and selecting both brothers and has continued to follow their pro and college careers.

"Their talent, athleticism and attitude were not only an enrichment in the game, but also a role model for all players," Siebmanns told American-Football.com in 2020. "It was clear to everyone that both would make their way -- and of course we are all the more pleased when it even leads to such highlights and records."

At the European Championship in Dresden, Germany, Amon-Ra, just 15 years old and undersized compared with the competition, won MVP honors -- a feat that wasn't surprising to his brothers.

Representing Germany was meaningful to the boys and the family. And even after all these years, they still keep in contact with former teammates from that trip.

"We were younger than these guys and a lot of these guys look like grown-ass men," Osiris said. "So, I'm like, 'F---.' But I don't even know if we ever talked about it, but then as soon as we get out there you can immediately see that these guys were at least like a good 10-15 years behind in skillwise when it came to football and we immediately started tearing it up in practice and then games."

The experience playing sports on an international level was eye-opening for the family but not entirely shocking. When he was 5 years old, Amon-Ra's promising ability led Miriam to enroll him at the SC Hitdorf soccer club, located in the Hitdorf district of Leverkusen. He spent countless hours in the backyard of his mother's childhood home to pick up on the new sport.

"He was very serious from day one," Miriam said. "Even as young as 5 or 6 playing soccer, oh, he wanted to have that goal. He was just born with it, I'm assuming."

Around that time, Miriam's brother, Mike, even suggested that Amon-Ra live in Germany so he could be readied for the German national soccer team.

John Brown, however, had different plans.

"Hell no. If there's no money involved in the sport, in my opinion it's a stupid sport because what if you become good? What do you get if you play soccer in America?" Brown said. "Now, if we lived in Germany and didn't plan on leaving and wasn't playing no football, then we're playing soccer then he could make money there ... we lived here so I'm like, 'Nah, man, we ain't doing that.'"

'I thought he was speaking gibberish'

Craig Reynolds spends a week in Los Angeles every offseason to train with St. Brown.

Despite signing with the Washington Commanders in August, the former Lions teammates maintain a close bond.

But there's something St. Brown always does that irks the veteran running back.

"He speaks German to his mom all the time. Or he'll speak it to his brother if we're in public and they're trying to say something. But I don't like it because I don't know German," Reynolds said. "I feel like they're sneak dissing me when I'm around, so I don't like that s---.

"I've told him multiple times like, 'You can't be doing that when I'm around. Or you've got to tell me what you're saying or teach me what you're saying.' It's not fair for me to be in an elevator and you're talking to your brother in German while other people don't know what you're saying," he said.

Reynolds entered the league as an undrafted free agent in 2019 but enjoyed a solid run in Detroit from 2021 to 2025.

He traveled to the German cities of Munich and Cologne in June 2025 with St. Brown and former Lions teammate Kalif Raymond for Lions youth football camps. There, he ate local dishes at upscale European restaurant Seehaus im Englischen Garten while enjoying other priceless moments with St. Brown.

But he could live without code-switching from his close pal.

"It just sounds so hard when they speak the words they're saying -- and aggressive," Reynolds said. "So, when they talk to each other it almost feels like they're yelling at each other with the accent and tone that you speak in that language. But it's always cool. I probably know two words in German, that's it."

Atlanta Falcons receiver Drake London was a college teammate of St. Brown's at USC but didn't catch wind of his German heritage until their second year on campus in 2020. Unlike Reynolds, he didn't poke fun at St. Brown, but he was initially caught off guard.

"He was on the phone with his mother, who he speaks to in German fluently all the time. And I kind of looked over. I thought he was speaking gibberish at first," London said. "I didn't know what was going on, but he explained that they grew up speaking German. I thought that was pretty cool.

"He was like, 'Yeah, I speak to my mom in German.' I just left it at that."

St. Brown perfected his German while speaking it exclusively to his mother all his life. She instilled discipline in her sons by making them master 10 vocabulary words at a time before they were allowed to access their video games and assigning workbook pages, books and vocab cards and using other methods to teach her sons the language.

That her parents couldn't speak English was another motivating factor to introduce them to her culture.

"So, looking back on it, I'm glad that I did do it because now I'm able to text my mom in German. I'm able to read, you know, fluently in German, speak fluently German," St. Brown said. "And I think all this stuff helped. So, look, you know, at the time I was pretty disappointed, pretty upset, but looking back on it, I'm very grateful."