One drive offered a snapshot of the way things have been going for Amon-Ra St. Brown. On first down from the Lions' 10-yard line in the third quarter of their win over the Giants, Jared Goff hit St. Brown on an out-and-up route for 30 yards. It was St. Brown's 500th career catch, most in the NFL since he showed up in 2021.
On 3rd and 4 three plays later, St. Brown ran a stop route to the line to gain, caught a pass that Goff zipped between a cornerback and linebacker, then turned up field for 20 yards. He should have had another big gain on the very next play, but Goff missed him high while St. Brown was running wide open down the middle of the field.
Then, on 3rd and 11 from the Giants' 20-yard line, the Lions trailing by three, St. Brown let a short pass from Goff slip through his hands, off his face mask and into the arms of Giants safety Jevon Holland. It should have been an easy pitch and catch between a star quarterback and star receiver. It was instead an ugly turnover that nearly came back to bite them.
"Man, that thing was coming out hard. I gotta make that, but it came out hot, wasn’t really expecting that, and then unfortunate pick," St. Brown said after the Lions' 34-27 overtime victory. "But I don’t stress too much about those. I move on to the next play, I keep going. A coach once told me, ‘So what, now what?’ when I was in college, coach Keary Colbert, and I kind of live by that."
Colbert, a wide receiver for the Lions from 2008-09, was St. Brown's position coach at USC.
St. Brown failed to snare another catchable pass in the first quarter when Goff hit him in stride on a slant and Giants' corner Cor'Dale Flott did just enough to break it up. St. Brown, who finished with nine catches for a season high 149 yards, wasn't dinged for any drops in the box score, but his hands, at times, have been uncharacteristically shaky of late, including three drops in a span of four games.
"Stuff like that happens," said St. Brown. "He made a good play on the first one. ... You can’t get hung up on one play too much because there’s highs and lows throughout the game, so for me, it’s just, next play. I’m gonna catch the next one. I’m not worried."
The Lions wouldn't have survived a scare from the Giants without St. Brown's second-quarter touchdown on a wide receiver screen on 3rd and goal 11 yards from the end zone and his three clutch catches on their game-tying drive at the end of regulation.
It wasn't the prettiest win, but as St. Brown and many of his teammates reiterated, the Giants are a better team than their 2-10 record would indicate. In fact, Campbell told his players in the locker room after the game that the Giants "remind him a lot of us in 2021, '22," said St. Brown, a dangerous opponent that doesn't back down. St. Brown praised New York's front four on defense and its "underrated" playmakers on offense.
"I think they’re a fearless team and they know that," he said. "They really just go out there and play, and when you play a team like that you never know what can happen. Early on I knew it was going to be one of those games, like, it’s going to come down to it, and sure enough it did.
"But there’s a lot of stuff as an offense that I feel like we can still correct, there’s some plays out there that we left. But we were pretty explosive today, and I think that corrects a lot of your mistakes as an offense."