Der Bodyguard: The Unlikely Journey of a German Playing In the Super Bowl

On June 29, 2003, the Panther Juniors, an (American) football team from Dusseldorf, a city in Germany's northwest industrial heartland, traveled a couple hundred miles south to Schwäbisch Hall, a small town in the southern state of Baden-Wurttemberg. There, the Panther met the Darmstadt Diamonds for what was then, and for some maybe still is, the most important football game of their lives: Germany's Junior Bowl XXII. Both teams were made up of players under the age of 19, players who grew up in Germany's thriving, quirky subculture of American football diehards. Some might have expected the Diamonds to show the Panther a close game—an earlier encounter that season ended 19-14 for the Panther—but what happened was a sporting massacre.

The Panther, thanks in large part to the strength and skill of their offensive and defensive lineman, Sebastian Vollmer, dismantled the Diamonds 40-0. They did it the same way they'd done it all season, which the Panther ended undefeated. On offense, they lined up Vollmer, sent him off to blast a hole right through the opposing defense, and simply followed behind. With Vollmer up front, running back Abu Ambukilayo, the game's MVP, scored three touchdowns.

Vollmer won two Junior Bowl rings as a Panther. On Sunday, he might add a third, much larger ring to his collection. The quiet, 6'8", 320-pounder plays offensive tackle for the New England Patriots. The German press, and many of his estimated 80 million fans, have begun referring to Vollmer, who is now 30, as Tom Brady's bodyguard. If the Patriots win, Vollmer will be the first German—and one of the most unlikely players ever—to win a Super Bowl.

"He first came to us I think in the winter of 2000," remembers Vollmer's youth coach, Steffen Breuer. Vollmer was 16, and he'd already won a national championship as a swimmer. "It was a gift to see in such a young person, two meters in height, very wide shoulders. He was, even then, one of the fastest players on the team."

Although he was clearly a special athlete, nobody could have predicted he'd one day play in the Super Bowl, or even professionally. The German youth leagues are about as far as a kid can get from the NFL. The game's culture in Germany is also vastly different than it is stateside.

For one thing, youth players in Germany aren't associated with schools, as they are in the United States. Rather, American football clubs, much like soccer clubs, are independent organizations, known as vereins. At the adult level, the clubs play in the various divisions of the German Football League. But they also run youth squads. The youngest Panther team is for boys under 11. The Panther, founded in 1978, is the oldest continuously-active American football team in Europe. It has about 450 active players total, in all of its divisions, which include women's football.

Once a kid ages out of the U-19 program, as Vollmer did in 2003, they usually have one option: transition into the one of the various divisions of the GFL. But even in the GFL's top division, the league is a passion project more than it is a professional or even semi-pro gig. The players pay for their own pads and travel. Most teams play in front of a couple thousand fans.

That Vollmer could go beyond the GFL was clear to everybody when he led the team in Junior Bowl XXII. But it almost didn't happen.

"He liked to play with the youth team definitely, and he had a good time there," remembers Breuer. "[But] after his last season he was so much better than the rest of the team, and even other teams, that he sometimes had motivational problems."

Vollmer was an intelligent, even cerebral, kid, and he wasn't convinced professional football was realistic. He would sometimes diet and lose weight because as a young man he wasn't always comfortable with his size. And he didn't necessarily enjoy playing on the offensive line. Breuer remembers some heavy conversations they had back then, about weight and football, about growing up.

"I always had to convince him that, sure, he could play tight end. Maybe he could play better than the guy who played tight end. But there was definitely no one who could play better tackle than him," Breuer says, with a laugh. "I think it was, as we see now, maybe not the wrong decision."

When the scholarship offers started coming in, Vollmer had mixed feelings about leaving his friends and family. Even after his first season at the University of Houston, where they initially let him play tight end, he wasn't convinced. He came home that winter and had a long conversation with Breuer. Transitioning to college can be difficult for American students, but for international students it's not just about being on your own for the first time, it's about learning to survive in a different world.

The student-athlete system was alien to Vollmer. And Breuer thinks that perhaps he had some trouble adjusting to the more authoritarian world of American football, where players do as they're told, no questions.

"Sebastian was always a thinker. He was a very intelligent man. He was an intelligent player but he was also an intelligent man," says Breuer. "He wanted to be convinced. He wasn't a guy who you say jump [and he says] how high, yeah? He was one who asked why and how. And here in Germany when you're a youth player, our way to communicate to our guys was to explain things. And I don't know whether he found this in the states at the beginning."

Vollmer decided to return to Houston. His English improved. So did his game. After a private workout with the Patriots, the team selected him in the second round of the 2009 NFL Draft. Many fans were initially dismayed, wondering if team management had lost its collective mind. Nobody had ever heard of him, and yet the team picked him in the second round? But over the next five seasons, Vollmer started just about every game he's been healthy enough to play in. Now Patriots fans watch him block for Brady and punch an occasional hole for LeGarrette Blount.

Talking to Breuer, it's clear he's proud of his former player. But maybe the thing he's most proud of isn't that Vollmer found success on the field, but that he found the strength to overcome his difficult, lonely, and culturally-confusing period:

"If you see him play, if you hear him talk, he is an American player. He's not the German who plays there. He is an American player. And I think this is [the result of] a big effort that he can be proud of, because to make this big step, to make this decision, physically and mentally to change in this other world?"

Breuer pauses for a moment.

"Yeah. Respect to him."