BEST MAY BE ON THE HORIZON FOR BRYANT
Martavis Bryant is discovering the benefits from being taken under the wing of Antonio Brown and learning from the NFL’s top receiver.
While the rest of his Steelers teammates arrived for lunch in golf carts Monday at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Bryant received a ride in the $500,000 blackand-gold customized Rolls Royce that Brown brought to training camp.
After the way he burst on to the NFL landscape as a rookie, maybe Bryant already is worthy of royal treatment. And, perhaps, the best is yet to come.
“I would say through my hard work and how I’ve prepared, I’d say I will have a good year this year,” Bryant
said.
Bryant had a good year in 2014. He had only 26 catches, but he had eight touchdowns and averaged 21.1 yards per catch — easily the highest among the top 50 receiving yardage leaders in the AFC and NFC.
“We threw him a lot of deep passes, that was kind of his go-to catch,” quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said. “Now we can throw it to all areas.”
What’s more, he caught three of the five longest completions from Roethlisberger, including touchdowns of 94 and 80 yards. Six of his catches were for 35 yards or longer.
He did all this despite not dressing for the first six regular-season games. And he is prepared to improve on those totals in 2015.
“I’m coming into it with more confidence, more focus, more attention to detail, so I can become a better player,” said Bryant, a fourth-round draft choice from Clemson who was the 19th receiver taken in the 2014 NFL draft. “The season is coming fast, so a lot of the work we put in now will pay off in a couple days.”
Despite having ideal size (6 feet 4, 210 pounds) and speed (4.4) for a receiver, Bryant’s draft stock was down because of his reputation for having bad hands in college. The same has been said of Sammie Coates, the Steelers’ third-round draft choice this year from Auburn. He is a physical marvel who possesses size, speed and strength, but he had a drop percentage of 19.1 in college, according to NFL.com.
Bryant had a few drops last season, but it was what he did after he caught the ball that everyone remembers.
“People are going to judge, regardless what you do,” Bryant said. “You can’t go by that. If they feel like your hands are bad and you feel your hands are bad, go put the work in and make them better.”
Bryant put the work in by hanging around with Brown, watching his tireless work ethic and spending many days after practice catching passes on the jugs machine.
“Coach [Mike] Tomlin always told us to imitate A.B. and watch how he works,” Bryant said. “A.B. wants us to be a better worker than player.
“When I wasn’t playing at first, I’d always talk to him about how to stay focused, how to keep working, especially when you get down. But he’s been a big brother and a great leader the whole time.”
And even a chauffeur.