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.
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.
“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.
“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…