On the road to superstardom

“I’m very self-confident right now. Self-confidence is very important in this sport.” This quote by the German-American football player Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Detroit Lions dates back to December 2021. Just 22 years old at the time, the wide receiver had just scored his second touchdown in his first NFL season. Two touchdowns – a feat never before achieved by a player with a German passport in the elite US league. He has scored many more since. St. Brown currently has every reason to feel very self-confident – now aged 24, he is already able to look back on an impressive career. 

What are Amon-Ra St. Brown’s roots?

Amon-Ra is the youngest son of a German mother, Miriam Steyer, and an American father, John Brown, who twice won the Mister Universe title in the amateur class as a bodybuilder in the 1980s. John and Miriam met at a fitness fair in Germany in 1989. They married seven years later, and their sons Equanimeous, Osiris and Amon-Ra were born in 1996, 1998 and 1999. All three brothers played college football in the USA; Equanimeous is under contract with the Chicago Bears – he made the move to the NFL before Amon-Ra. At a very early stage of their lives, the boys’ father attached particular importance to his sons developing into exceptional athletes. They were even given names to make them stand out: the addition “St.” was chosen because Brown was said to be a “slave name”.

What is Amon-Ra St. Brown’s connection with Germany?

Even though the St. Brown brothers mainly grew up in California, they frequently spent time in Germany, especially in the Rhineland, where their mother is from. As a child, Amon-Ra attended summer camps organised by first division soccer club Bayer Leverkusen, for example. Before last season, Amon-Ra and his brother Equanimeous organised a football camp for children in Cologne – and said in an interview that he was very happy with how it went: “There was a huge amount of interest and the whole thing was a lot of fun. I always really love coming back to Germany. It reminds me of when I was young.”

What has Amon-Ra St. Brown achieved in the NFL to date?

Perhaps St. Brown’s greatest achievement is that with him as a key player (and one of the team captains), the Detroit Lions were able to make the playoffs for the first time in 32 years last season. The team was ultimately two wins short of clinching the Super Bowl, but the young wide receiver has already seen numerous career highlights. He was recently voted onto the All-Pro team of the best NFL players, for example, and he won the competition for the best catch at the Pro Bowl weekend. A highly ambitious sportsman, Amon-Ra St. Brown has already set his sights far into the future and can even imagine taking part in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles: “I don’t know how things will work out with contracts and injuries yet, but I could potentially play at the Olympics – either for Team USA or for Germany.”