You never quite know what to expect when the NFL hits international turf.
You might get Bryce Young looking like a competent quarterback, or you might get the head official reciting a penalty in the country’s native language. Well, as it turns out, both happened in Munich for Sunday’s Carolina Panthers-New York Giants matchup.
The league didn’t exactly send its best — and that’s putting it mildly — but in this case, Young and Shawn Hochuli might actually be the best the NFL’s latest international slate had to offer. Especially the latter, who was showing off by throwing out some German words he learned to the crowd.
Shawn Hochuli reciting a false start penalty in German got Rich Eisen and Kurt Warner fired up! pic.twitter.com/qK2beu0oIL
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 10, 2024
And Rich Eisen and Kurt Warner, on the call for NFL Network, were fired up.
“You know a Hochuli’s going to flex,” Eisen said as a not-so-subtle mention of Shawn’s father, Ed.
Well, it was seemingly an ode to Shawn’s muscular father, a former referee himself.
Ed Hochuli called a penalty in Spanish at the first NFL game in Mexico in 2005.
His son Shawn carried on the tradition by calling this penalty in German in Munich. ❤️ (h/t @FOS) https://t.co/0UoAiVzCQm pic.twitter.com/rxEFwuWNDm
— NFL (@NFL) November 10, 2024
“That was a flex. That was a big-time flex right there,” said Warner.
“Look at Shawn Hochuli showing us all up,” added Eisen. “He’s feeling smug, too.”
Eisen made sure to make a callback to Hochuli, flexing his bilingual muscles, as he and his crew had to sort out a kerfuffle.
And he was right, as the head official for Giants-Panthers had to recite offsetting penalties on Feleipe Franks and Ihmir Smith-Marsette, with the latter throwing a punch and flipping a football to his former teammate, Jaycee Horn.
Scuffle! Giants punt returner Ihmir Smith-Marsette and the Panthers punt team got into it. It resulted in offsetting penalties aka nothing happened. pic.twitter.com/qD0zvBD8rX
— Arye Pulli (@AryePulli) November 10, 2024
“Now do it in German if you really want to show off, Shaun,” The Rich Eisen Show host quipped.
Now, that would’ve been cool, but alas…
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.