When Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown set a new NFL record in September for stringing together six consecutive games with at least eight catches and a touchdown, former 11-year NFL veteran T.J. Houshmandzadeh knew exactly what he was feeling. Houshmandzadeh grinded to the previous record back in 2007.
And when the Washington Commanders failed to stop St. Brown as he turned nine receptions into 116 yards and two touchdowns with a win, well, he knew how they felt, too. As a coordinator at Long Beach Poly in 2017, Houshmandzadeh coached against St. Brown, at that time a senior with the California prep juggernaut Santa Ana Mater Dei.
“I was coaching at Long Beach Poly and Amon-Ra was at Mater Dei. And I’ll never forget this,” Houshmandzadeh said, referencing a 107-yard, two touchdown night for the state’s No. 1 recruit.
“I said to one of these (players), ‘Man, f— him up, man. ….’ And his exact words to me were, ‘Coach, he a dog. I couldn’t believe they said that to me. … Like, the dude said, ‘Coach, he a dog.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t give a f—. What, you not a dog?’”
“It was just — his peers respected him in high school.”
Since he’s emerged as a legitimate NFL receiver, St. Brown’s calling cards in Detroit have been consistency and reliability. After he broke Houshmandzadeh’s record for such attributes, Lions quarterback Jared Goff referred to him as a “friendly target” who “always comes back to the ball, always catches the ball away from his body, is always where he needs to be, understands coverage, understands what I’m looking at, what I’m looking for.”
It is plainly uncommon for a second-year player to have this solid of a grasp on the nuances of both offense and defense, let alone consistently impose his will the way he has. And yet, this is who St. Brown has always been.
He recalled to The Detroit News suffering one of the worst, if not the worst, loss of his football career as a junior at Mater Dei — a 42-28 defeat at the hands of bitter rival Bellflower St. John Bosco in the state semifinal, derailing a run at a perfect season.
“When we lost to them my junior year, I was devastated. I remember crying after the game and whatnot,” St. Brown said.
Mater Dei got another crack at St. John Bosco in the regular season when St. Brown was a senior, and he caught eight passes for 206 yards and two touchdowns in a 31-21 win. The two teams played again that same year in the state semifinal: St. Brown caught eight passes for 150 yards and a touchdown in a 49-24 win.
And then, to claim the perfect season, be named national champions by USA Today and cement Mater Dei as one of the greatest teams ever with a 52-21 win over Concord (California) De La Salle in the state title game: Eight catches, 137 yards, two touchdowns.
“When the games got hot and heavy against the more talented teams, you can just see this other person come out of him,” St. Brown’s coach at Mater Dei, Bruce Rollinson, said.
“You’d just look in his eyes and go, ‘Oh, boy, Amon-Ra’s going off tonight.’ … There was something about it, I can’t verbally put it into words.”
The duality of Saint
St. Brown is soft-spoken, but his words exude intent and thoughtfulness in a way that most don’t. Never mind the fact that he can also speak fluently in French and German. His manners are on point.
He looks people in the eyes and confidently shares his world’s point of view, which currently is that of a 22-year-old who’s named after an Egyptian sun god and is setting NFL records pertaining to consistency, all less than 18 months after hearing 111 names go before him in the 2021 NFL Draft.
And so, with those words, he’s liable to pop off every now and then. Unprompted shots at Commanders wideout Dyami Brown and naming all 16 pass catchers taken ahead of him on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” — these clips and quotes fit nicely into stories about the raging competitiveness of an underdog.
But the truth is, the things you see and hear from St. Brown while he’s wearing Detroit Lions apparel are not a product of his draft position. It may motivate him — however, it’s just another chip placed high atop a stack that was already on his shoulder. If anything, those who remember St. Brown from his high school days, when he was the guy everyone wanted at the next level, would probably say he’s become more tame over the years.
“He is a dominant competitor,” said Jason Negro, the head coach at John Bosco.
“… Like, he has a passion that’s really just different from a lot of kids. He doesn’t wanna just beat you. He wants to dominate you. And he’s gonna do it … with his chin up high, and he makes his little funny faces that he does, when he takes pictures and stuff like that, just to show you that he’s an animal. And I mean that in a respectful, positive way, cause he’s an absolute beast.”
Rollinson is currently in his 34th year of coaching at a school that’s won four USA Today national titles and is one of only two schools in the country to produce a pair of Heisman Trophy winners: Alabama’s Bryce Young and former USC quarterback Matt Leinart.
While most coaches in this situation would probably find it hard — or even rude — to compare players’ greatness, when it comes to St. Brown, Rollinson has no such trouble.
“I don’t wanna get into, ‘Who are the top-3 quarterbacks?’ I don’t go there,” Rollinson said. “But I always use (Amon-Ra) top-three (players he’s coached), because he comes to mind immediately when you talk about preparation, when you talk about work ethic, when you talk about character.
“I mean, he’s one of those generational players.”
So if you think the chip on his shoulder developed from being drafted on Day Three, guess again. He’d be naming the receivers drafted in front of him and following along with their careers even if he were the second or third one taken.
“There was an edge to him that you can’t — it’s just innate,” Rollinson said. “He manufactures stuff in his head to motivate himself. He wanted to to excel at the highest level, but that’s that self-motivation, where you create that through a chip on your shoulder.
“He had no reason to have a chip on his shoulder in high school, other than, ‘I’m gonna out-work everybody, and I’m going to make plays.’”
St. Brown grew up in Anaheim and played his freshman ball at Servite High School before transferring to Mater Dei with his older brother Osiris. Before he even took a snap at Mater Dei, St. Brown was offered by Utah, Washington State and Notre Dame. Alabama offered him as a sophomore; it wasn’t long before he had an open invite to every college in the nation.
“I’ve been here at Bosco and playing at this level of football, which is obviously the top in the state, for the last 13 years,” Negro said. “And you could probably count on one hand, the guys that had an impact or come immediately to the forefront of your mind when you’re talking about the ‘All-Opponents team.’
“He would definitely be … on that team without question, if not the MVP of that ‘All-Opponents team.’”
In his last two seasons at Mater Dei, St. Brown accumulated 132 catches, 2,549 yards and 41 touchdowns over 25 games played. As of now, he’s currently ranked No. 208 on 247Sports’ all-time football recruits with an equal rating to two-time Pro Bowl running back Willis McGahee.
There’s a video of St. Brown’s prep highlights on YouTube with a title that includes the line, ‘Most SAVAGE High School Receiver EVER!’ and boy, they are not lying. It contains a clip where he catches a ball from JT Daniels — who was later his quarterback at USC and now plays at West Virginia — for a touchdown at the near pylon, stands up, and spanks the defensive back in coverage right on his hindquarters. And the guy just … keeps walking back to his sideline.
“In high school, I was just having a lot of fun,” St. Brown said.
When you hear the list of receivers that St. Brown looked up to as a high schooler — Odell Beckham Jr., Julio Jones, Antonio Brown, Keenan Allen — maybe that’s not surprising. St. Brown loves a spectacle, and more than that, he loves being the spectacle. But what receiver doesn’t?
While part of his underdog mentality may have been manufactured, it’s also a byproduct of being the youngest of three children in a household guided to greatness the family’s patriarch and two-time Mr. Universe, John Brown.
“His dad is somewhat crazy, crazy in a good way,” Houshmandzadeh said. “And with him having two older brothers, he has no choice but to be the way he is.”
Osiris, 24, currently plays for Stanford, and the oldest St. Brown brother, Equanimeous, 26, was drafted by the Packers the same year that Amon-Ra graduated high school.
“We did everything together. We worked out together, we lived together, we literally lived in the same room for about 15 years,” St. Brown said. “We did everything together and so for me, we were super competitive and I always had to push a little extra harder to beat them in whatever we were doing.
“So I think just being a younger brother, it kind of made me super competitive. And I just never really changed growing up. I was just always super competitive. Always wanting to be the best in whatever I was doing, and I think that comes from being that younger brother.”
‘There’s nobody built like Amon-Ra’
In his day, Rollinson has seen some pretty special athletes come through Mater Dei. But he’s never seen one with a self-imposed, post-practice routine quite like St. Brown’s.
“He didn’t care … if anybody else wanted to go through the regimen. He was a team guy, but he also wasn’t gonna talk, he wasn’t going to explain everything. And he wasn’t being selfish, it was just, he was that focused by himself,” Rollinson said.
“Monday was more, top-end route running, meaning the top of the route. Take out the first 10 yards, he would work on whatever — a dig route, an out-route, and just over and over. … I probably have the order mixed up, but Tuesday was an additional conditioning day, and then Wednesday was catch drills. I know I said it was by himself — he had this whole sequence of ball-handling drills, and laying on the ground and throwing the ball up in the air.
“It was fascinating and he religiously did it. And I never asked him why, because I knew why: ‘Cause he was preparing himself for the next level and the next level beyond.”
But according to most, including legendary Tennessee quarterback Tee Martin, who recruited St. Brown to USC and is now wide receivers coach for the Baltimore Ravens, the ultimate allure of St. Brown was not his playmaking. It was his intelligence, both on and off the field.
He made easy work of schoolwork and Rollinson said his wife, who teaches advanced-placement history, used to rave about “the depth of his writing and his conceptualization.”
“I used to kid him and say, Amon-Ra, do you time yourself when you go to the bathroom? I mean, everything had a purpose,” Rollinson said.
Martin recalled a meeting with Rollinson, where he asked the Mater Dei coach to tell him one thing about the “young phenom” St. Brown that could make him say, ‘Wow!’
“I remember his coach said, ‘Well, Coach, he scored 31 (or whatever it was) on an ACT test and he was pissed, because it was in English, and he asked if he could retake the test in a different language. And he actually took it in a different language and scored better,” Martin said.
“I can’t remember the actual test score numbers, but I remember I was like, ‘What? That’s great! He’ll get into SC!’ And Coach (Rollinson) was like, ‘No, Coach, he was mad because he knew he could do better if he took it in another language. I think it was in French.
“So, that in and of itself was just beastmode — just from an intelligence standpoint.”
There are countless stories about St. Brown like this, where longtime participants at the highest levels of the game, and even longtime high school educators, were just blown away by the unique behavior and abilities of a teenager. That line from Houshmandzadeh about garnering respect — it’s true, but nobody had much of a choice. St. Brown mandated the respect.
Rollinson laughed as he remembered a local reporter coming to the school for an interview with Amon-Ra and Osiris, and the result of the reporter opening the interview by teasing them about the different languages that they speak.
“The way he said it, my head popped up, and I went, ‘Uh oh,’” Rollinson said. “Well, here’s what they did, and I probably have it (backwards), but Amon-Ra flipped to German, Osiris flipped to French, and every time the guy would ask them a question, they would answer it fluently in two different languages.”
An ankle injury in Week 3 at Minnesota ended St. Brown’s record run, and a disastrous day as a whole for the Lions offense this past Sunday saw him be held to just 18 yards, his lowest output since a Week 11 loss at Cleveland last season.
But in a sport that’s almost defined by its fickle nature, he remains the Lions’ Mr. Reliable. He is, by the words of so many intelligent football minds, built different. And he always has been.
“He’s Amon-Ra. There’s nobody built like Amon-Ra,” Rollinson said.
“There’s something in that head of his that, when the switch goes, look out.”
nbianchi@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @nolanbianchi