Bill Belichick ran a tight ship with the New England Patriots, a ship with no room for players speaking German or any language other than English.
Former Patriots defensive tackle Markus Kuhn joined NFL Network’s Good Morning Football this week and told a story about the time Belichick overheard him speaking German during training camp in 2016.
Kuhn was talking to teammate Sebastian Vollmer, who is also German, and as they were enjoying a nice conversation in the cafeteria, Belichick wasn’t having it.
Fair warning: Do not speak German around Bill Belichick 😂 #NEPats | @TheMarkusKuhn | @MikeGarafolo pic.twitter.com/zBcC0X13ty
— Good Morning Football (@gmfb) November 12, 2025
“Sebastian Vollmer…Fellow German, was there,” Kuhn said. “Obviously, we were the only two Germans in the entire NFL, so we were happy about speaking a little bit of German while we were together,” Kuhn said on Good Morning Football. “So, we were in the cafeteria at the Patriots facility, nobody else around us, no Americans around us so, we obviously spoke in our mother tongue.
“Bill Belichick walked by, and you can see he took a little double-take and said, ‘Guys, English only. I want to hear what you guys are saying.’ And we were like, ‘Wait a minute, is he serious right now? Is he messing with us?’ But I’m pretty sure he was serious. He wanted to know what we were talking about.”
Kuhn reiterated they were the only ones in the cafeteria until Belichick walked by, so it’s not like they were shutting anyone out of what was described as a very casual conversation about their families.
Bill Belichick would never make it with the Los Angeles Dodgers, where not only do they have several players who speak languages other than English, but Teoscar Hernández is learning Japanese from Shohei Ohtani while teaching him Spanish in return. Imagine Belichick walking by that lunch table.
As crazy as this story is, it’s also not surprising that this was Belichick’s reaction to hearing two of his own players speaking in a language that he couldn’t understand.
Belichick ran a totalitarian regime up in New England and was caught operating his own spygate, he wasn’t going to let anyone infiltrate that room with a different language. Ironically, New England traveled to Germany to play the Indianapolis Colts seven years later, and Belichick even asked how to say “Patriots win” in German. If only he listened to Kuhn and Vollmer. Luckily, the phrase ultimately wasn’t needed, with the Patriots losing 10-6, and Belichick getting fired two months later.