Detroit Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown driven to be great in NFL - ESPN

DETROIT — Not long after John Brown arrived at Valley View Sports Park in El Dorado Hills, California, the opposing coach approached him about his youngest son, Amon-Ra St. Brown.

It was around Halloween 2008, and as the 9-year-old St. Brown went through warmups for the Yorba Linda Bulldogs, Canyon Hills Panthers coach Brian Liles revealed a secret to John.

«We nicknamed your son Freddy,» Liles told Brown.

«Who's Freddy?» John responded. «His name is Amon-Ra.»

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«In practice, as we were getting ready for you guys, we called him Freddy because all the kids are afraid of him, like Freddy Krueger,» Liles said.

For Liles, it's a memory he'd like to forget. St. Brown dominated the Panthers that day, playing tailback, slot receiver and middle linebacker. Coach Liles' son, Justin, played quarterback for the Panthers and described St. Brown as «the scariest dude in Pop Warner.»

«At the time, he hit me so hard that I knocked out one of my baby teeth,» Justin recalled. «I literally sat up, looked at the ref and he said, 'Are you good?' and I said, 'I just lost a tooth.' And he sent me out the game and sure enough, I took out my mouthpiece and it was sitting right there.»

St. Brown said the moniker was earned.

«I always played up, so I was a younger kid playing against 10-year-olds. And so, I always had to go a little harder because kids were always a little older than me, but I was mean [when] I was young,» St. Brown said. «Always mean. I played middle linebacker, used to hit dudes crazy so that's why