Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown has been as consistent as it gets over the last couple seasons, so when he has a down game or a down couple games it stands out. In the season opener against the Los Angeles Rams, St. Brown had just three catches for 13 yards on six targets.
Even with some conflicting thoughts out there, it's clear the Rams placed some focus on taking St. Brown away. That's par for the course when you're an elite receiver, and Jameson Williams' breakout game was a warning to future defensive game plans about putting so much focus on St. Brown.
During his press conference on Monday, head coach Dan Campbell was asked about the effort to get St. Brown involved.
"Yeah, I mean, we tried. We did. We called his number quite a few times," It felt like, for whatever reason, either coverage took it away or something like that happens on the inside slant and he kind of trips on it. There were just these things that it was just kind of one of those games."
"But he’s constantly somebody we think about, I mean, that doesn’t go away. And certainly, we want to get him targeted more than what showed yesterday, I mean, that’s the obvious," "He’s a catalyst for us....Saint’s one of our guys, but as far as teams looking at that, I’m not worried about that, we’ll find a way.”
Amon-Ra St. Brown will naturally have better days
Jared Goff had just 28 pass attempts in Week 1, and he has acknowledged he was generally a little bit off in the game. There's also some visual evidence of the lack of the rhythm in the Lions' passing game (h/t to Jeremy Reisman of Pride of Detroit), which Campbell alluded to during his Tuesday appearance on 97.1 The Ticket.
"It’s always going to be the last to come. The precision of your pass game is the hardest game to really find a rhythm in because everybody has to be on the same page, and that’s from obviously the tight end, the quarterback, receivers, the timing, the protection holding up long enough. And so there’s so many moving parts that are in that, it’s the last thing that really comes. So of course we wanted it to be better, but I’m also not that surprised that we were off on it a little bit.”
It was just "one of those days" for St. Brown against the Rams, and it's easy to overreact to it when a day like that comes in Week 1. But the level of concern is low, if it isn't non-existent. A big day may be coming Sunday against Tampa Bay.