Netflix's Receiver shows how important an aspect of the game that nobody thinks about is to the Lions
The Netflix Receiver show is a really good watch if you wanted to get more insight on Detroit Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown beyond the 16 receiver thing or the fact that his dad was Mr. Universe. It was cool to learn a lot more about him. But we also learned something about the Lions […]
The Netflix Receiver show is a really good watch if you wanted to get more insight on Detroit Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown beyond the 16 receiver thing or the fact that his dad was Mr. Universe. It was cool to learn a lot more about him. But we also learned something about the Lions and Dan Campbell in this one.
Something that seems really evident, but something that doesn't get thought about a lot. The Lions take a ton of pride in their skill players blocking. It's just something you don't think a whole lot about when you think about the skill positions. You're thinking of catches, yards after catch and spectacular plays. You don't think about what happens away from the ball.
The Lions seem to think about that a lot as there were multiple moments on this show where it was the blocks that were getting celebrated over some big catches. The two big moments that standout were Dan Campbell talking about St. Brown going for blocks on guys against the Ravens despite the game being totally lost at that point.
"Alright, watch this, because I can relate to this. This is where my soul is at. This is where my fuckin soul is at" Campbell said. "This, to me, embodies everything that St. Brown is about, because we're getting our teeth kicked in at the end of the game. He don't want to come out of the game, and he wants us to run the ball so he can freaking block, even though there's no way we're going to win that game at that point."
The next one came when St. Brown was bragging on the bench about how good his block on Jamel Dean was on the Jahmyr Gibbs touchdown against the Bucs in the playoffs and Campbell comes over an emphatically gives him a five and says "fucking good job man."
These aren't the only instances where the Lions have gone out of their way to talk about skill players making blocks. Jameson Williams' blocks against the Chargers that helped spring David Montgomery for a 75-yard touchdown was a big moment and drew some attention to the Lions "no block, no rock" ideal in the receiver room.
"I believe that’s the standard in the room though as well. I mean that." Campbell said. "All of those guys are that way. I can tell you all three of them between (Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown) Saint, (Lions WR Kalif Raymond) Leaf and (Lions WR Josh) Reynolds is where it all starts. And (Lions WR Jameson Williams) Jamo is just – man, he’s part of it. And look, he’s always – he’s never been shy about hitting somebody and trying to end the run game. You saw that in college. So, I think that’s the standard here. I say it all the time, (if) you want to be known as a physical team, your receivers have to block in the run game and your corners have to tackle on defense, and we do that. We do that here. I think it’s a rite of passage and they showed up, they showed up big. We talked about not only making your plays in the pass game, executing, being productive, but man, we wanted physical dominance from the perimeter."
It's just things like this that show you that the Lion's development is really layered and that there is a realization that the little things are just as important as the big things if you want to win a championship. This is Super Bowl type behavior from a team. Nobody is taking plays off.
Lions player is already considered one of the best in the league at his position despite limited starts
ESPN continued their positional rankings with NFL execs on Thursday with their safety rankings. We'll be honest, we didn't think the Lions would be included in the mix. Not that we don't think the Lions have good safeties, we just didn't think the execs would think that. No Lions made the actual top 10 list, but […]
