The New England Patriots are in the German city of Munich this week, and set to take on the Detroit Lions for the sixth international game in franchise history.
The team of head coach Mike Vrabel made the trip on Thursday, and so did a select group of media representatives — including from Pats Pulpit. Today’s edition of our Sunday Patriots Notes will therefore look a bit different, and not just serve as a wrap-up of the week that was but rather a look at the trip and its host city.
10 things we learned about the Patriots, Munich and the NFL
1. The Patriots
have a balance to strike: All work and no play makes the Patriot a dull boy — it’s not quite as dramatic but flying to a different country to play a regular season game is obviously a difference experience for the players involved. For some of them, it is the first trip abroad in their lives meaning that they had to get passports and experience the challenges of transatlantic travel (more on that in a second).
At the end of the day, it is still a work trip for the team and one that is being taken seriously. The Patriots, who are coming off a 45-27 loss against the Packers, have made that very clear: they want to bounce back from last week’s defeat and head into their bye week as the owners of a 6-4 record.
(On a site note: the Lions do not get the benefit of a bye after the Germany trip; they already had theirs in Week 6).
That said, they also did not spend the entire four-day journey in the team hotel either. For starters, players had practice and media obligations, and they were given some free time in the afternoons. Some of that was used on getting food — McDonalds received rave reviews from players such as center Jared Wilson because it offers chicken wings in Germany — while some participated in a guided tour of the city.
2. Travel is a challenge: Brenden Schooler is not a stranger to flying to Europe. This week’s trip is the third in his five-year career after he already played in Frankfurt in 2023 and in London in 2024, two games the Patriots ended up losing. And yet even for a veteran such as himself travel is a challenge.
The Patriots left from Providence on Thursday evening with the goal of getting some sleep in on the flight. The body still has to adjust to the six-hour time difference, and for Schooler that showed the following night: he woke up at 2:30 a.m. and before getting back to sleep hit the workout room in the team hotel to get a brief session in. Other players shared similar experiences.
Getting those disruptions out of their way sooner rather than later was the plan behind an earlier-than-usual trip. The Patriots held a walkthrough practice in Munich on Thursday followed by a regular session and another walkthrough on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
The Lions, meanwhile, took a different approach: they traveled 24 hours later, meaning their adjustment schedule is theoretically behind the Patriots’. And yet, head coach Dan Campbell is “very confident” in his decision.
“We have got up and moved around, and I know that every eight hours here, we’re going to begin to acclimate,” he said, via Pride of Detroit’s Jeremy Reisman. “I know by the time we hit Sunday morning into that Sunday afternoon game, we’re going to be ready to go. So, we will be primed and ready, and I feel very good about our plan.”
3. Players have learned their lessons from prior international trips: Like Brenden Schooler, DeMario Douglas has also been part of the Patriots’ previous two journeys to Europe. And for him, one of the main goals this week was simply to “eat well” — something he apparently did not do in both Frankfurt and London.
One of the reasons for that, however, might have been his own culinary choices: he went to a Five Guys the last time the Patriots played an international game. Lessons learned, one would assume.
4. Lorenz Metz is in the spotlight: Unless they are some big-name players on the back-nine of their careers, practice squadders enjoy a relatively anonymous life. Chances are that, until this week, you haven’t heard Lorenz Metz’s name mentioned often if at all whether you live in Germany or the United States.
That all changed this week. Metz, who grew up an hour east of Munich, was made one of the faces of the operation. On Thursday, he took the podium alongside the likes of Drake Maye and Christian Gonzalez and drew considerable interest especially from the local media in the audience (in an unexpected twist, he also opted to answer all questions be they in English or German in his native language).
Metz, who also organized and paid the traditional O-line dinner on Thursday night, will step out of the spotlight soon; carrying an international exception, he is ineligible to play on Sunday. For a few days, however, he was — at least in the eyes of the German media present — one of the headline names.
5. Getting to know Germany was on the to-do list: Yes, the Patriots made it very clear this was a work trip. However, they also mixed together work and fun in order to get familiar with their home country — both in their free time and in the meeting room: as Mike Vrabel noted, the team did a quiz asking players to name Germany’s neighboring countries.
We didn’t get full results, but safety Craig Woodson said that his teammate Lorenz Metz managed to name “a couple” of the nine countries in question.
6. At least temporarily, Munich is all-NFL: Walking around the old town in Munich this week, you are confronted with a fascinating dichotomy. On the one hand, you see workers setting up Christmas markets and getting the city ready for the coming weeks. On the other hand, you see the NFL represented on every corner. Storefronts, flags, thousands in NFL gear — pro football has managed to take over a city typically dominated by soccer.
The city itself also is actively trying to promote itself along the way, unsurprisingly. As part of the efforts, media members from both New England and Detroit were given a tour of the city including a dinner that can best be described as plentiful.
Unsolicited tip: go to the new city hall and take the elevator up the tower for some of the best views of the city and, when the weather is right, the Alps.
7. Paranoia is a constant: It’s no secret that NFL teams are paranoid; they operate behind closed doors and making sure not to spill any of the tricks of their particular trade. That paranoia, it turns out, travels. Practicing at the FC Bayern Munich training facility in a southern suburb, the Patriots did not leave anything up to chance — to a point where they installed temporary walls to shield some of the view of the practice fields.
8. A pro-Lions crowd? When arriving in Munich on Thursday, you could the impression you made the trip to Detroit: from the people on the street to the atmosphere in the different team pubs, this was a definitive pro-Lions crowd. Part of it has to do with the contest being designated a Lions home game, and the city therefore hosting more events catered toward that particular fan base (there was, for example, a big Lions fan fest). It also is the first Lions international game since 2015, and first ever in Germany.
However, the balance of crowd power has since shifted. The main reason for that simply seems to be the composition of the fan bases themselves, with the Patriots having more fans in Europe who don’t need to turn the trip into a four-day weekend.
The Patriots also had another ace up their sleeves: the Tartan Army, Scottish soccer fans who were invited to visit the game by team owner Robert Kraft after they spent parts of the summer in Boston to support their country at the world cup. Now, they are in Munich supporting the Patriots.
9. FC Bayern is king, but… The Patriots have been closely cooperating with the most successful German football team, FC Bayern, for multiple years now. This cooperation resulted in the team practicing at the club’s facility at the Säbener Straße in southern Munich — with players such as Serge Gnabry and Luis Diaz, wearing Patriots jerseys, of course, watching practice from the field level.
Bayern are not just well-represented in an NFL context, but all over the city. Walking through the old town, you see multiple team-affiliated shops selling merchandise, and those were all popular tourist attractions as well.
However, FC Bayern is not the only team in the city. In fact, it’s other club, which is the older of the two, enjoys wide-spread support: 1860 Munich, a one-time German champion now playing fourth-team soccer. They actually played a game on Saturday, drawing 0-0 against Unterhaching. 1860’s nickname, by the way? The Lions.
10. You get to see plenty of NFL jerseys: Before wrapping this up, a quick roundup of Patriots jerseys that have been spotted over the last few days: Drake Maye, Christian Gonzalez, Tom Brady, Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, Devin McCourty, Jakob Johnson, Sebastian Vollmer, A.J. Brown, Gino Cappelletti and John Hannah.
With the crowd not only divided between the Patriots and Lions, however, there also are a lot of other teams and players represented. The most random one spotted? That would be a Brock Osweiler Broncos jersey.
