Amon-Ra St. Brown wants to do something special with the Detroit Lions in the championship game at the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday night. He himself has been living it for three years.

You hear these announcements again and again. Often they are just empty words. Fighting statements that fall flat.

When disappointed athletes want to prove themselves verbally first. When they make grandiose announcements and talk about how they’re going to show everyone. That those who saw it differently will regret it.

Amon-Ra St. Brown did nothing else. With him, however, it wasn’t just an announcement, but a promise.

He was only drafted in the fourth round in spring 2021, with 16 receivers selected ahead of him. “I’ll never forget those 16 receivers before me,” he said. The fact that he announced this at the time made headlines

Amon-Ra St. Brown: Long since made the breakthrough

The fact that he made the breakthrough long ago may surprise some observers, especially how. 912 yards, five touchdowns in 2021, then 1,161 yards and six touchdowns in 2022 and 1,515 yards and ten touchdowns this season – St. Brown has steadily developed into one of the league’s top receivers.

St. Brown, Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson and New Orleans’ Michael Thomas are the three players in NFL history to collect 90 or more catches in their first three seasons. The reward: the 24-year-old became a Pro Bowler in 2022 and an All-Pro this season.

What is even more surprising is that the names of the 16 receivers from 2021 are still chasing him today.

No question: St. Brown took the 2021 draft personally

That’s why he reads the names to himself before every training session, writing them down in a notebook that also contains his goals. Ja’Marr Chase from the Cincinnati Bengals is one of them, for example, as is Jaylen Waddle from the Miami Dolphins and DeVonta Smith from the Philadelphia Eagles.

He was only number 112, the 17th receiver. “I’ll never forget that,” says St. Brown today. Instead, he now wants to ensure that he becomes a player “who will never forget.”

Amon-Ra St. Brown: The right mindset

What helps him: a special attitude, a distinct motivation, a special mentality. These days, all of this is summarized under the term mindset.

“A lot of scouts and teams look at numbers, whether it’s what you produced in college, how fast you are or how big you are,” he said a few weeks ago in an interview with Tom Pelissero and Ian Rapoport from the “NFL Network”.

Those are things that can be deceiving at the receiver position, St. Brown said, “because there are so many other things that go into it. Intelligence quotient is a big part of the receiver game. Understanding the defense, the zone coverage. Being friendly to the quarterback, having strong hands, things like that that sometimes you can’t really see on tape.”

And also the mindset and toughness are aspects that are overlooked when focusing on the traditional methods of scouting wide receivers.

A lot was overlooked with him in 2021. It is therefore this “chip on my shoulder”, as the Americans say, the feeling of having to prove something. A drive that often remains. As is the case with St. Brown. He puts his money where his mouth is. Not only through his statistics, through his performances on the pitch, but also through his preparation

Amon-Ra St. Brown leaves nothing to chance

He has been catching 202 passes with the Football Passing Machine after every training session for years. It’s a tradition he’s been using since his high school days to hone his catching skills. And if he doesn’t run enough routes in a workout, there are extra sprints after practice to get the job done.

Recently, there was something that fueled his ambition even more: He didn’t make this year’s Pro Bowl despite his strong numbers. “I don’t know how many 1,500-yard receivers with ten touchdowns didn’t make the Pro Bowl,” said the German-American. According to Sportradar, this has only happened to one player before St. Brown: Hall of Famer Isaac Bruce.

Amon-Ra St. Brown like Aaron Donald

Quarterback Jared Goff chooses a comparison that describes St. Brown’s mindset very well. “Certain guys are different. The way he is, in the weight room and on the field, in my experience, is very similar to Aaron Donald,” Goff said on “ESPN.””It’s business, business, business. He works harder than anybody.”

St. Brown is not inferior to Donald, Goff said, “when it comes to how much time they put in and how serious they take it when they’re on the court. It’s a lot of fun to play with a guy like that.”

Coach Dan Campbell is also full of praise for his reliable No. 1 receiver. “The things he does every day in practice and every game show up all the time,” the ex-pro said.

“That’s what makes a pro, and that’s why he’s a pro. You know exactly what you’re going to get every time, so it’s easy when you have a player like him in the team,” Campbell continued: “It’s easy to game plan with him because you know what you’re going to get. “

The chance to achieve something special

Although St. Brown has always been confident in himself and his abilities, he probably wouldn’t have bet on this rapid development, as he let slip before the Championship Game on Sunday night.

“If they had told me my freshman year that I’d be in the Championship Game in two years, I don’t know if I would have believed it,” St. Brown told the New York-based Associated Press news agency, “But now we’re here. It’s right in front of us. We have a chance to achieve something special. We’ve just got to keep going.”

The 49ers will know: With St. Brown, that’s not just an announcement, it’s usually a promise.