NFL: Equanimeous St. Brown misses out on Super Bowl

On January 20, 2019, Equanimeous St. Brown was sat at home watching the NFL conference championship games.

"Won't be at home this time next year," tweeted St. Brown - and he wasn't far wrong. He may have missed out again through injury in 2020 but on Sunday he took to the field as the Packers faced the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a place in Super Bowl LV.

Unfortunately for St. Brown, he will have to wait a little longer to become the potentially fourth German to appear in the showpiece event after the Buccaneers won 31-26 to reach the big game in their home city of Tampa, Florida, on February 7.

St. Brown, 24, was twice sought out by quarterback Aaron Rodgers and caught one ten-yard pass but later failed to bring the ball under control in the end zone for a two-point conversion, as the legendary Tom Brady dominated proceedings.

Nevertheless, the evening marked a impressive milestone for the California-born St. Brown, who possesses both American and German citizenship, a high-point in an international family story worthy of Hollywood – but which began at a bodybuilding convention in Cologne in 1989.

An international affair

Miriam Steyer was only at the convention to accompany a friend who played badminton. John Brown, on the other hand, had flown in especially from California to present a new protein product for a German company.

Brown knew what he was talking about. The three-time Mr. World and two-time Mr. Universe was pure muscle, and immediately caught Steyer's attention. Her English wasn't brilliant, she recalls, so they didn't have a great deal to talk about, but the attraction was mutual and the two stayed in touch.

California felt a lot further away from Germany than it does today and phone calls weren't cheap. So the pair exchanged letters, gradually getting to know and love each other over a distance of 9,000 kilometers. "Every six months I'd fly over," she tells DW.

In 1996, they got married in the Rhineland, before settling in the US. That fall, their first son was born.

Destined to be an athlete

John Brown always wanted his children to be athletes. Footballers, if possible, in the NFL. And he knew that small nuances could make the difference.

Names, for example. But his name was a slave name. Therefore, he added the prefix "St." for "saint" – and which also happened to be the first two letters of his wife's maiden name.

And to ensure that his son immediately attracted attention, he named him Equanimeous Tristan Imhotep, the first name meaning "composure," the third after an ancient Egyptian high priest. His brothers, Osiris Adrian Amon-Ra and Amon-Ra Julian Heru are also named after the Egyptian gods of the underworld, the sun and the sky.

Miriam Steyer says she had no say in the matter and, while she approved of the idea of her sons become professional athletes one day, she "focused on all the other stuff outside sport." Principally on the boys' education. For Steyer, it was important that the children grew up speaking several languages, which she believes will stand them in good stead later on, after their sporting careers.

Roots on two continents

She was also keen to show her sons her own country and, every summer, the family would visit relatives in Germany, splitting their time between Leverkusen near Cologne and Friedensdorf in Saxony-Anhalt, where her great aunt Sieglinde Zeising lives.

Equanimeous has both American and German citizenship and says he has fond memories of "lots of animals, lots of land, a few houses, a barn and lots of fruit and vegetables in the back garden" when he thinks of his German "Tante Linde," who is now 88 years old. Friedensdorf, he says, was completely different to what he knew from California.

Back home on the West Coast, he and his brothers had been lifting weights in the garage since the age of five and sticking to a strict nutritional plan drawn up by their father. "I can teach them everything to become the best in the world," John Brown told the Los Angeles Times. "Because I know what it takes."

Equanimeous says it's advantageous that his father was also a professional athlete. "He showed us how hard the road is, how hard we would have to work."

From the streets to the Super Bowl?

To do that, John Brown would take his sons to Compton on weekends, the notorious LA suburb where he himself grew up and which in the 1970s had the highest murder rate in the USA.

In Compton, his sons would play sports against local kids, measuring themselves against youngsters who didn't grow up in sheltered families and who certainly didn't go to private school, but knew how to succeed in life nevertheless.

That was the attitude that once helped John Brown to progress from the streets to the top of his sport, and it's helped his son as well.

In 2018-19, the 1.96m wide receiver made 21 catches for 328 yards in 12 games. Not bad for a rookie, but not enough to prevent the Packers from missing out on the championship game. In December 2020, he scored his first touchdown and ended the season just one game away from the Super Bowl.

He'll be watching on television again on February 7 - but his story is only just beginning.