“Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” said Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown during a Zoom interview from Southern California back in the day. For the Lions’ wide receiver, the ‘dad lectures’ always carried a little extra weight, as growing up under bodybuilding legend John Brown meant surviving a childhood of intense training and zero tolerance for nonsense. John Brown always had a simple logic for his sons’ lives growing up: remove anything that would cause distractions, like video games. And now, in a recent edition of his Black Coffee Podcast, the former bodybuilder revealed a major change he didn’t want his sons to go through. 

“I’m telling you right now, if my sons want tattoos, they can have them. They’re grown men; they do what they want,” said St. Brown Sr. “But I always told them, don’t do that, it’s a stupid thing. Why would you do a tattoo?… Things change, but you don’t want a permanent— like, look at your wife, she has her makeup on today. That’s the makeup that’s in. You don’t want that permanently on your face… So I told my kids, ‘Don’t do stupid stuff. To get tattoos on your body is dumb, you know, because everyone’s doing it don’t mean it’s smart, it’s a good thing.’” 

John Brown has three sons, each of them carrying a distinct name in football. The youngest of them, Detroit Lions’ Amon-Ra, is the most like his father. Just like Brown Sr., his youngest son plays with a lot of intensity, takes his work seriously, and has earned a reputation for being no-nonsense. However, he still shows flashes of his father’s original and larger-than-life personality. Not just that, he also mimics his father’s thoughts on tattoos.

“I’ll never get a tattoo in my life,” he said in a video uploaded on his YouTube channel. “Let me ask you this: Would you put a bumper sticker on a Lamborghini?”

In 2023, everyone thought that St. Brown had backtracked from what he had said about tattoos when it appeared that he had Pete Davidson’s No. 1 fan inked on his arm, under a tattoo of Pete’s face, no less. After winning the 2023 Pro Bowl best catch competition, St. Brown showed the ink to Pete, who looked shocked nonetheless and hoped that it would come off.

“Oh dude, that’s so dope. Thank you man. That’s amazing,” Davidson said, who was a captain at the Pro Bowl Games in Vegas. “I hope it comes off.”

The WR’s brothers, Equanimeous and Osiris St. Brown, have already made a serious name for themselves in football. Equanimeous St. Brown is the eldest of the three sons and broke into the NFL in 2018 with the Green Bay Packers before moving to the Chicago Bears in 2022. He then signed with the New Orleans Saints in 2024 and featured on their practice squad before moving to the San Francisco 49ers with a one-year deal in July 2025.

The second of the three brothers, Osiris St. Brown, first made waves at Mater Dei High School before heading to Stanford. His talent was obvious whenever he took the field for the Cardinals. However, a brutal foot injury forced him to step away from playing football entirely.

Meanwhile, Amon-Ra St. Brown has had a successful NFL career so far. He arrived at the Detroit Lions in 2021 after the franchise picked him in the fourth round of the draft. The WR has been a cornerstone of Detroit’s offense ever since. He has already racked up four Pro Bowl appearances and two All-Pro selections. 

Amon-Ra St. Brown can’t wait to get started amid David Montgomery’s disappointing trade 

After two straight playoff trips and coming close to knocking off San Francisco for the NFC title, the Lions hit a low in 2025. A frustrating combination of key injuries and on-field inconsistency derailed Detroit’s campaign last season. Despite a disappointing season, the Lions’ wide receiver is as motivated as ever to lead his franchise to success. 

“I’ve been excited to get back to work,” St. Brown told ESPN a couple of weeks ago. “I feel like last year, we had a disappointing season as a team. That’s how we feel internally. So, I’ve just been excited to get back to work. I’ve been motivated as ever. I feel like I’m motivated every year, but this year, I feel like it was a little different.”

In the offseason, Detroit shook up its roster by sending David Montgomery to the Houston Texans in exchange for interior lineman Juice Scruggs. The move clearly caught Amon-Ra St. Brown off guard. While talking to his brother Equanimeous on their podcast, he confessed that the trade left him feeling sick to his stomach.

“I’m sick. Selfishly, I’m sick because I love D-Mo,” he said to his brother on the St. Browns podcast. “One of my favorite teammates, no matter what the situation was. We knew that he wanted more carries and wanted to play more. He never made it about himself. He was always all about the team, which I know is hard sometimes, especially in his position.”

With the offseason preparations in full swing, St. Brown will be hoping he can motivate the Lions to get back to where they were next season. A lot has happened to the team since they made it to the NFC Championship game, but he will be hoping to lead the team as a veteran and get the Lions roaring again.