Outlook: A fourth-round pick in this year's NFL Draft, St. Brown has a chance to play a significant role in Detroit's receiving corps this season.
He and veteran Kalif Raymond have been getting a lot of reps in the slot with the first-team offense, and St. Brown has been making the most of those reps, especially the last week or so. He's made a couple flash plays in practice over the last week of training camp. He's also shown he's not afraid to mix it up a bit and play a physical brand of football, which is something head coach Dan Campbell has said he really likes about St. Brown.
The next three weeks are going to be key for St. Brown to show just how much impact he can have in the preseason and how much trust he builds with coaches. The next three weeks will go a long way in determining how big a role St. Brown can play in the Lions' offense early in the regular season.
Practice report: Monday was an unpadded practice coming off a day off, and it was moved indoors because of inclement weather in the Allen Park area this afternoon.
Still, St. Brown got some good work in. He played both inside and outside receiver Monday, but the majority of his reps do come inside. He talked last week about the slot being more of a feel for zones and getting open, while playing outside was about winning 1-on-1 battles. He feels he can do both. With Breshad Perriman still nursing a hip injury, Raymond played more outside in practice Monday and St. Brown in the slot.
St. Brown had a nice catch along the sideline on an out route, beating slot cornerback Mike Ford for a nice gain in the 7-on-7 period of practice.
Another area where St. Brown is going to get an opportunity to make an impact is in the return game. He's been a really good open-field threat throughout camp, and he was back returning punts on Monday. Don't be surprised if we see him in that role quite a bit in the preseason.
Quotable: "I mean I was fired up because they're competing, man," Campbell said last week of a small dustup in practice between rookie cornerback Ifeatu Melifonwu and St. Brown. It was good to see both of them two young bucks after it.
"We had a pretty good idea of Amon-Ra, 'The Sun God', what he's capable of. Just when he gets pads on, he's aggressive. It showed up on tape in college, like this guy will mix it up. Nobody backed down from each other and they got better from it, so I was happy."
