Notes: Watch priceless mic’d up footage of Lions at the Pro Bowl Games

Amon-Ra St. Brown has a message for Lions fans at the end.

On Friday, the Detroit Lions media folks posted a solid nine minutes of Amon-Ra St. Brown mic’d up at the Pro Bowl Games to the team’s official YouTube channel. There’s a lot of great moments in the video, from game action during flag football to goofing around with teammates. Several bits are nice callbacks to things from before that the Lions’ staff know Detroit fans will understand.

After a segment showing the players interacting with the fans and some warm-ups, there’s a quick shot of St. Brown on the sideline about 54 seconds in. Chicago’s Montez Sweat playfully taps on a ball the Lions wide receiver is holding and swipes at it once. St. Brown brings it up to his chest, looks at the Bears lineman and says “ball security.” Running back Jahmyr Gibbs, standing next to St. Brown, agrees immediately with a reflexive “ODB.” Our damn ball. St. Brown repeats that and then another ball security mantra: body, ball, boundary. Basically, put your body between the defender and the ball in your hand closer to the sideline away from the guy trying to tackle you.

We then get to see the moment the Lions’ Pro Bowlers got together to take a incredible group photo:

About a minute and a half in, Jahmyr Gibbs takes St. Brown on a mission to learn Giants nose tackle Dexter Lawrence’s sack dance and then it’s on to a lot of cheering on Penei Sewell in various competition events. It’s pretty hilarious to see Sewell on the bench complaining about how tired and hungry he is. “It’s humid as hell. (looks directly at the camera) They got me running through a wall last year. Now they got me weight lifting,”

Later in the video at the 4:55 mark, Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase marvels at St. Brown’s hair. “When the hell you dyed your effing hair baby blue?” When Saint lets him know it was before the Rams playoff game in early January, Chase cracks up. “You were playing with your shi* like that?” Even the Chargers’ Keenan Allen was amused: “(this) boy crazy.”

Then at 5:51, we see St. Brown talking to former Lions cornerback Darius Slay on the bench. It’s a blast from the past as St. Brown asks about which teammates Slay played with in Detroit. D’Andre Swift? Nope. But Marvin Jones is a yes, Calvin Johnson is a yes, and Kenny Golladay is a yes.

There are some cameos of Penei Sewell’s son Malakai getting fist bumps from everybody, St. Brown messing with the flag football referees, and finally a heartfelt message from the Sun God to Lions fans. It’s all really great stuff as the mic’d up videos usually are, so take a look.

Now, on to the rest of your weekend Notes:

• Two days ago, our own Meko Scott and Morgan Cannon posted a great 26-minute video grading all aspects of the Lions’ excellent 2023 offense. You can watch the entire video on our Pride of Detroit YouTube channel:

• Lions superfan Keegan-Michael Key hosted NFL Honors awards show on Thursday, and he made the rounds on talk shows prior to the event. Up on YouTube are a 10-minute segment on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and a 22-minute interview on the Rich Eisen Show. Naturally, there are some fun stories about his fandom and the Lions in these interviews.

• Jared went to Jared! While they’re no Isotoners, it’s a fantastic gesture of appreciation by the Lions’ starting quarterback.

• Erik Schlitt and Joe Kania posted their season recap episode of the Detroit Lions Breakdown podcast this past Sunday. You can listen to the entire 90-minute audio in a web player on their site or from most podcast services.

• We had a short clip of Aidan Hutchinson talking to FS1’s Speak crew in Friday’s Notes, but they weren’t the only ones who interviewed the Lions Pro Bowler. NBC’s Pro Football Talk posted an 11-minute video of Mike Florio and Chris Simms talking to Hutchinson in Las Vegas on YouTube.

• This is not a Lions-focused article, but it is a very interesting football article: Ben Solak wrote a tremendous piece on The Ringer about the evolution of Kyle Shanahan’s offense in San Francisco that is absolutely worth checking out.

• Also not Lions-focused, but again fascinating stuff that surely will be of interest to our readers. The Athletic’s Nate Tice had NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year CJ Stroud break down his own film and talk the viewer through his thought process reading the defenses he faced. The video is only seven minutes, so it’s a fast watch.

• The Lions were really good running the ball outside the red zone (sixth from the right in Arjun Menon’s chart):

• The Lions had a pretty diversified rushing attack, with surprisingly high outside zone frequency in spite of being a relatively gap-heavy scheme.