Amon-Ra St. Brown was joking, but he might be onto something. The way the first round of the playoffs is set up, "some of us said it was scripted."
"Because they’ve got (Mike) McCarthy playing the Packers, they’ve got Tyreek (Hill) playing the Chiefs, the Lions playing the Rams. I don’t know about all that, but it’s just crazy that Stafford’s first game against the Lions is back at Ford Field," St. Brown said Thursday ahead of the biggest game in Detroit in recent memory.
What's more, Jared Goff's return to the playoffs is against the team and the coach that kicked him to the curb. Sean McVay and the Rams couldn't get rid of Goff fast enough after the 2020 season in their rush to acquire Stafford, just two years after Goff had helped them reach the Super Bowl and just a few weeks after he'd led them to a road playoff win with a mangled thumb.
McVay has expressed regret over the way he handled the trade, specifically leaving Goff out in the cold as negotiations went down with Stafford and the Lions. Goff has said it left him "extremely disappointed and upset." It also stoked a fire inside him that's been burning ever since.
Sunday is Goff's shot at revenge, even if he's not viewing it that way. And his favorite receiver wants to help him get it.
"As a team, we want to win, obviously," said St. Brown. "It’s not about Stafford or Jared, it’s about this team. But if you ask me personally, I definitely want to win it for him. I know he might not tell the media, but I think it’s within every player. You come from a team that — first-round pick, went to the Super Bowl, then gets traded — if you ask anyone, they’re going to feel some type of way.
"So for me, I want to go win it for him. I mean, it fires me up that he’s playing his old team. I’m excited for him, and shoot, I want to do it for him as much as I want to do it for the whole team."
Asked if he's said this to Goff, St. Brown smiled and said, "I told him ‘Rams-Lions.' That’s all I need to say.”
Leave it to St. Brown, by the way, to use a teammate's past as his own fuel. The Sun God can conjure motivation out of thin air. He slid in the draft and then made it his mission to outplay all 16 receivers taken before him. He has more catches than all of them, and more yards and more touchdowns than everyone other than fifth overall pick Ja'Marr Chase. He said he had to "go harder" after being snubbed for the Pro Bowl last week and then went crazy in the regular-season finale. When Michael Jordan "took that personally," so did St. Brown.
Asked this week about St. Brown carrying extra motivation into the playoffs, Dan Campbell smirked, "I’m glad, because you know, he needs something to motivate him."
"Look, Saint will always find that and that’s what you gotta love about it," said Campbell. "That’s why he’s the ultimate competitor, because he can look at something and say, ‘Alright, well if you don’t think it’s good enough, watch this.' There’s a reason why he’s who he is and it’s because he’s wired that way. There’s nothing fake about that. Watch him in practice. He works like that every day. He works like he wants to be the best and he believes he can be the best. Man, you can’t have enough of those guys. I mean, how do you fail when you have guys like that?"
Goff and St. Brown have been a lethal connection in Detroit. When throwing to St. Brown, Goff has a career passer rating of 108.5. St. Brown, since his breakout game against the Vikings in Week 10 of his rookie season, leads the NFL in catches and ranks fourth in yards and touchdowns.
"Going into my second year, we threw back home in California (during the offseason) and then just going into that second year, we kinda clicked. And ever since then, we’ve been firing," said St. Brown.
Goff and St. Brown have been pillars of the Lions' rebuild under Campbell and Brad Holmes. It's hard to imagine where Detroit would be without them. They endured the hard times of a three-win season in 2021 and a record of 4-19-1 in the first 24 games under Campbell, and now they're gearing up for the Lions' first home playoff game in 30 years.
"Just to see where we’ve come from then to now, it’s awesome for me to be able to say I was a part of it, from when Coach Campbell first got here," said St. Brown. "Just to see the whole process, it makes it that much sweeter for us to be in this position that we are now."
Only thing sweeter would be a win Sunday night.