Amon-Ra St. Brown Gets His Germany Game at Last

The news reached Amon-Ra St. Brown on a FaceTime call in February, and the Detroit Lions arranged it so the person delivering it was his mother. Miriam St. Brown is from Germany. Her son speaks the language fluently, spent stretches of his childhood there, and has waited most of his career for the league to send his team across the Atlantic. On Sunday it finally does — Detroit against New England at the Allianz Arena in Munich, 9:30 a.m. Eastern on FOX, and St. Brown playing a regular-season game in his mother's country for the first time.

"Playing football in Germany has always been a dream of mine since I was a kid," he said at the league meetings in March. "I'm just grateful. I'm happy, and I'm honoured that football will be played in Germany, and we'll be part of that." His family will be in the building. The German flag already rides on the back of his helmet — look at the photographs from Miami on Sunday and it is there next to the Lions logo, small enough to miss and exactly the point of this week.

He arrives with a strange split in his season. The volume is all there: 61 catches on 86 targets for a team-high 657 yards, and a team-best eight catches for 86 yards in Miami. The touchdowns are not. He has five on the season and has not scored since September — a drought USA Today's power-rankings crew flagged this week while asking whether the Pats' secondary, fresh off being shredded, might be where it ends. Two 100-yard games in eight is not the standard he sets. If a breakout is coming, the stage was picked out months ago.

Detroit travels as the designated home team on a four-game winning streak, and lately the defense has been doing the heavy work. The Lions have held four straight opponents to 21 points or fewer, the first time they have managed that since 2016, and in Miami they held the Dolphins to 228 yards and no touchdowns in a 19-9 win. It was their first game without Jack Campbell, the leading tackler who went on injured reserve with the neck injury he suffered against Minnesota — coordinator Kelvin Sheppard and the linebackers wore Campbell's No. 46 into the stadium, then played like it. Rookie Derrick Moore had two sacks in his first career start, Alim McNeill added another, Chuck Clark intercepted Malik Willis, and the deadline-week secondary added Andre Cisco from the Jets. Jake Bates kicked four field goals and that, plus one touchdown, was enough.

The offense is the part of this team with something to prove in Munich. Jared Goff has gone two straight games under 200 passing yards with an interception in each, and his run of 30 consecutive games with a touchdown pass ended in Miami, where he was sacked three times a week after Minnesota got to him four times. The interior line in front of him has been shuffled — Christian Mahogany benched, center Cade Mays out against Miami with an ankle injury and due back this week — and an attack that averaged 29 points a game has scored 20, 19 and 19 in its last three. The season-long Goff is still in there, though: 2,134 yards, 15 touchdowns against two interceptions, a 106.4 rating, and a team that has given the ball away only five times all season.

When the passing game stalls, Detroit leans on Jahmyr Gibbs, and Gibbs keeps answering. He has run for 847 yards and nine touchdowns and caught 34 passes for 285 yards and two more scores, and in Miami he scored the game's only touchdown — on fourth-and-1 from the 8, because Dan Campbell's offense does not come off the field there. New England's run defense is the one Patriots unit that held up on Sunday, allowing 96.7 rushing yards a game, eighth-fewest in the league. Something in that meeting gives.

New England's side of this game comes down to one player. Drake Maye was the AFC's Offensive Player of the Month in October. Then Green Bay came to Foxborough and Maye threw three interceptions in the first half of a 45-27 loss — the most points the Patriots have ever allowed at Gillette Stadium. His season reads like two quarterbacks stitched together: 2,282 yards and 18 touchdowns against 11 interceptions, on a team whose 19 giveaways are tied for the most in football. Micah Parsons, who spent Sunday chasing him, said afterward he thought Maye had lost confidence, per Pro Football Network's reporting. Munich is where Maye answers — on the biggest regular-season stage the league exports.

The help around him is thin and getting thinner. "We're wearing out the MRIs," Mike Vrabel told reporters on Monday. Rhamondre Stevenson is expected to miss the next few weeks with a knee injury, TreVeyon Henderson has missed two games after being hospitalised, and A.J. Brown — the blockbuster arrival from Philadelphia — is set to travel but remains a doubt. The line protecting Maye has already lost both opening-day guards, left guard Ben Brown is out, and left tackle Will Campbell left the Packers game with a knee injury. Across from that line stands Aidan Hutchinson, who leads the NFL in pressures even while going two games without a sack. It is the matchup the whole morning leans on.

The stakes need no dressing up. Detroit, 6-2, pulls level with the idle Chicago Bears at the top of the NFC North with a win. New England, 5-4 and the defending AFC champion, drops to .500 with a loss and takes its playoff margin down with it. This is the third NFL game Munich has hosted, in the league's fifth straight season playing in Germany, and Detroit's first international game since back-to-back London trips in 2014 and 2015 — the first time the Lions have ever been the designated home team overseas. The fixture lives on its Game Center page, the full numbers sit in the NFL Stats Hub, and the rest of the week lives on the NFL front.

St. Brown has been waiting since February for this one — really, since long before that. On Sunday morning, in front of his family, in a language he speaks as well as anyone on either roster, he gets to find out whether the dream game is also the breakout game.