A couple months after appearing in the NFC championship game and just hours before they host the NFL draft, the Lions have reached an agreement with Amon-Ra St. Brown that will keep the star receiver in Detroit through 2028.
The contract is a four-year extension worth $120 million, according to NFL Network. Initial contract numbers are often inflated by agents and go unchecked by national reporters, but if those numbers stand, St. Brown will match Tyreek Hill as the highest-paid receiver in the league. St. Brown will get more guarantees than Hill too, coming in at $77 million.
“I’m here four more years,” St. Brown said in an Instagram story. “It’s up. It’s turnt. Detroit, whatupdoe.”
St. Brown’s contract is the second-largest in franchise history, trailing only Matthew Stafford, and breaks Calvin Johnson’s record for a receiver in total money ($113.45 million), total guarantees ($53.25 million) and average annual salary ($16.2 million).
At $30 million annually, St. Brown becomes the No. 3-paid non-quarterback in NFL history, trailing only 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa ($34 million) and Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones ($31.75 million).
The numbers are astronomical, though not surprising. After all, St. Brown has been putting up monster numbers since the day he had to wait until Pick 112 to finally hear his name in the 2021 NFL draft. St. Brown had declared for the NFL draft early believing he would be an early-round pick, but wasn’t that big and didn’t run that fast at the combine, and fell all the way to Day 3.
But the Lions had fallen in love with St. Brown’s physicality and intangibles during the draft process, and circled him as the No. 1 target heading into the final day. They held their breath through six selections — one of which was spent on another receiver, Tennessee’s Dez Fitzpatrick — before taking the overlooked wideout out of USC.
All these years later, St. Brown can still recite the names of all 16 receivers who were taken before him.
And all these years later, he has more catches (315) than all of them too.
St. Brown was awesome that first summer in Detroit, really began to blossom when Dan Campbell and Ben Johnson took over the offense midway through the season, and went on to rewrite the franchise record book for a rookie receiver with 90 catches for 912 yards.
A year later, St. Brown broke the NFL record for most catches through any player’s first two seasons. Last season, he was even better yet, ranking second in the league in catches (119) and third in yards (1,515) while earning a first-team All-Pro nod. Then the playoffs rolled around, and when the Lions needed one final first down to end the league’s longest playoff win drought, well, you can probably guess where Jared Goff went with the football.
St. Brown finished his first postseason with 274 receiving yards, which trailed only Travis Kelce among all players in the tournament.
Asked the other week what makes St. Brown so special, Dan Campbell didn’t flinch.
“What doesn’t make him special?” Campbell said. “Everything he does is why he’s who he is. His work ethic, his desire to be good, his will to overcome, the amount of film that he watches, the pre-practice warmup, the post-practice routine that he has. It’s just everything about him is about being the best player he can possibly be. Being the best player, not (just) that he can be. He wants to be the best, and everything he does, it’s not lip service. He literally does everything he can possibly do to be the best, and that’s why.
“It’s no secret. Just walk around with him. Go live with him for a while if you really want to know what it looks like. Half of the guys say, ‘Well, I’m going to be great,” and they would go and they would quit Day 2 or Day 3. This guy just keeps going.”
That’s why the deal, enormous as it was, always seemed like an inevitability. St. Brown isn’t just the leading receiver for one of the league’s top passing offenses, nor one of the league’s most bankable playmakers on third down and in the red zone. He also embodies every inch of what this rebuild is about. He outworks almost everybody almost every day. He catches 202 balls after every practice, and is the last guy off the field most days in training camp. And for every big catch he makes, there’s a bone-crushing hit as one of the league’s best blocking wide receivers.
Amon-Ra St. Brown embodies the Dan Campbell era in Detroit. Now both men have extensions that will keep them in the Motor City for the long term.
“The things that he does every day in practice and every game show up all the time,” Campbell said this offseason. “That’s what a pro is, and it’s why he’s a pro. I mean, you can write down everything that he’s going to do and he’ll do it.
“There’s nothing easy about what he does. But for him, it’s routine, and it’s why he’s a great player. It’s consistency. You know exactly what you’re going to get every time, so it’s easy when you have a guy like him on your team. It’s easy to gameplan with him what you can do because you know what you’re going to get.”
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