Notes: Amon-Ra St. Brown is already back on the jugs machine

What would you do on your first day of vacation after five straight months of extreme physical labor? Drink heavily and hang out by a pool? Sleep all day in an effort to move as little as possible? Just spend the entire day at a pizza buffet?

Well, if you’re Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown—who finished the 2021 season as one of the best wide receivers in football—the answer is: go right back to work.

St. Brown was spotted on his dad’s Instagram account just going HAM on a jugs machine making one-handed catches with the caption: “No days off.”

Of course, this shouldn’t come as any real surprise to anyone who followed St. Brown during his rookie season. It started with the second he went undrafted in the first two days of the 2021 NFL Draft. Instead of sulking about it, he memorized the 16 wide receivers picked before him and went to the jugs machine.

Then when he arrived at Lions training camp, he quickly started the tradition of finishing every practice by catching at least 200 passes from the jugs machine, a routine that quickly spread to his teammate Kalif Raymond.

The end result for St. Brown’s rookie season? 115 targets, just two drops all season.

And I’m sure he thinks about those two drops all the time.

• Really cool piece here from The 33rd Team. Former Lions president Tom Lewand offered advice on how to hire a head coach and prioritize certain intangibles. Under Lewand, the Lions hired Jim Schwartz and Jim Caldwell. Lewand talks about the need for “emotional intelligence” in a leader. Try to read the entire article and not think the Lions hired the right guy.

• If you hadn’t heard, former Lions safety Quandre Diggs suffered a gruesome injury in the Seahawks’ season finale. Diggs, who will be a free agent in March, had surgery this week and is expected to undergo four to five months of rehab:

• PFF listed the top 100 players expected to hit free agency, which should be a nice resource for those looking forward to the player acquisition phase. Interestingly enough, there is not a single Lions player on the list.

• Barry Sanders is feeling pretty good about the Lions’ future:

• With how he finished the year, how high did Jared Goff climb in NFL.com’s weekly quarterback rankings by the end of the regular season? Not quite to the middle of the pack.