ALLEN PARK -- It’s been a heavy week of praise for Amon-Ra St. Brown.
The All-Pro Detroit Lions wide receiver is off to a red-hot start to open the season. He has 27 catches for 307 yards and a league-leading six touchdowns through four games. St. Brown is the first NFL receiver to have at least 25 catches, 300 yards and six scores through the first four games since Randy Moss did it in 2007. He also joins Calvin Johnson Jr. as the lone Lions players to have at least six touchdowns through the first four games.
Scottie Montgomery, the team’s receivers coach and assistant head coach, compared St. Brown’s mental toughness and preparedness to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. And Jared Goff has continually called St. Brown as good as anyone he’s been around.
“What makes him so good? Oh man, how long you got?” the Lions quarterback said on Wednesday. “Gosh, I feel like I talk about him every week. He’s smart. He’s tough. He’s physical. He can catch. He’s a leader. He blocks. He can run routes really well. He does everything well. He does everything well. He’s strong. He’s physical at the catch point. Did I say he’s smart? He kind of does a little bit of everything really well.
“He’s a quarterback’s dream to throw to and works tremendously hard, sets the tempo for us on offense at practice, and does everything right. He’s everything you want in a receiver, a teammate, and a leader. I love playing with him.”
First-year offensive coordinator John Morton said he told St. Brown that he’s the best “I’ve ever been around -- run and pass -- the way you prepare, the professionalism,” and the offseason work.
Morton has coached in the NFL for 27 years. He’s a former receiver who has coached the likes of Jerry Rice, Tim Brown and Anquan Boldin, to name a few.
“And I’ve said this before, he reminds me of Anquan Boldin -- they just come to work. All they want to do is dominate every single play,” Morton said. “But I told him, I said, ‘I don’t really care what the coverage is, you’re going to get open.’
“But I just think he -- just his attitude and how he approaches his preparation, I haven’t seen it from a wideout like that. That’s pretty impressive.”
Pro Football Focus ranks St. Brown third among all receivers to have at least 20% of their team’s targets. He’s also the fourth-best graded blocker among receivers. St. Brown has caught 27 of 32 targets to open, meaning he’s nearly automatic.
Morton joked that Rice wasn’t asked to block as much as St. Brown is. He added that “I don’t think (legendary 49ers coach) Bill Walsh wanted him (Rice) to block too much.”
St. Brown said Morton told him that before the opener against the Green Bay Packers. He said the Lions were warming up with a seven-on-seven drill when Morton came up and told him he was the best.
When he heard that, St. Brown said he stopped and thought, “‘He coached Jerry Rice. There’s no way I’m the best.’”
Morton coached Rice later in his career while with the Raiders. But Rice was still cooking defensive backs, and St. Brown even shared he watches clips of Rice at 42 years old “carving guys up.” The offensive coordinator has also compared St. Brown to Boldin more than a couple of times, with the work ethic and dependability as his reasoning.
“It means a lot. It means the world,” St. Brown said. “But I got to keep proving it, just because he says it now, doesn’t mean much if I can’t keep doing it.”
Morton regularly shows his receivers tape of Rice, Brown and “all the dudes” he’s been around. When St. Brown considers who Morton has worked with and seen, it makes those words mean all the more.
St. Brown’s work ethic is contagious. When he’s spending time after practice working on a route or doing his patented 202 catches off the JUGS machine, it bleeds down throughout the roster.
This type of praise also isn’t lost on the 25-year-old star wide receiver. St. Brown wants to prove his coaches and teammates right, while continually finding aspects of his game to improve.
“I feel like there is always room for improvement -- every year, every week, you try to find ways to get better,” St. Brown said. “I think that’s what makes this game so great, is that you can really never be perfect. You try to be perfect. But you can’t be perfect.
“For me, it’s like, I’m always trying to find ways to get better, whether it’s in and out of my breaks. Releases. The catch point. Run after the catch. Understanding coverages. There are so many little things that go into the game of football that you can always get better. There are always ways to get better. Even if you think you mastered everything, you probably haven’t.”
And for the record, St. Brown said the screenshot going around on social media that he was up playing video games at 4 a.m. before a game wasn’t him. It was his friend using his account. But he’s had some fun with that storyline, continuing that while speaking to reporters on Thursday in Allen Park.
“I like to have fun with it,” St. Brown said. “There are trolls on the internet, on Twitter, everywhere, so I can be a troll myself sometimes.”
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