Analytics continue to show rare air Amon-Ra St. Brown is in among his peers

Beyond his sheer production over his first three seasons, it's no secret that deeper data loves Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown. And he has been rewarded, as expected, for what he does on the field with a nice contract extension this offseason.

We've gone over how St. Brown cannot be pigeonholed as a slot receiver anymore. He lines up on the outside a good bit, and if wasn't effective his surface production wouldn't have been what it was last season.

Pro Football Focus data shows how good St. Brown was lining up as an outside receiver last season. Ranked by yards per route run, St. Brown was PFF's fourth-most productive outside receiver in 2023.

St. Brown averaged 3.03 yards per route run as an outside receiver last year. He gets dinged a bit for a low average depth of target (aDOT), bit there's no denying his proficiency.

"Few playmakers in the league are better than Amon-Ra St. Brown. Over the past two seasons, 73 of St. Brown’s targets have come within nine yards of the line of the scrimmage, yet he’s recorded 1,459 receiving yards in that span with 37 gains of 15-plus yards."

"St. Brown caught six touchdown passes in 2023 and moved the chains 43 times. He forced 10 missed tackles, recorded 25 explosive gains and gained 375 yards after the catch."

Analytics continue to show rare air Amon-Ra St. Brown is in

PFF also recently ranked their best receivers in the league against press coverage last season. St. Brown is also No. 4 there.

'"St. Brown’s 1,346 receiving yards against press coverage tied with Puka Nacua and trailed only Tyreek Hill and CeeDee Lamb in the regular season and playoffs in 2023. He averaged 12.8 yards per catch, despite seeing an average target depth of just 8.2 yards."

Football Insights recently offered up a chart showing how NFL wide receivers have done against man and zone coverage over the last decade (2014-2023). Up and right is where you'd like to be. St. Brown sits seventh over the span in yards per route run against zone coverage. He's got a lot more receivers ahead of him in YPRR against man coverage, but the fact he's not in a cluster that makes his name harder to find on the chart says it all.

And this chart is not merely a season-long data sample, it spans the last 10 NFL seasons, presumably with some threshold for snaps played to qualify.

Everyone knows St. Brown is a star, and one of the best wide receivers in the NFL by basically any metric you want to find. We don't really need more data to prove it, but it's good to point out new data when it's out there.