If his name doesn’t ring a bell, give it a few more months.
Equanimeous St. Brown, a former standout receiver at Servite, was selected in the sixth round of the NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers on April 28.
St. Brown had played the past three seasons at Notre Dame, catching a total of 92 passes for 1,484 yards and 13 touchdowns. After a junior season in which he caught 33 passes for 515 yards and four touchdowns, St. Brown elected to enter his name in the NHL Draft.
“I played (college) football to play in the NFL,” St. Brown said at the NFL Scouting Combine in March. “I started this journey to play in the NFL. I feel like I’m ready to take this next step, and I feel like it’s the right decision.”
St. Brown had been predicted to go as high as the second round, but slid down the draft board as he wasn’t as productive his junior year.
St. Brown’s best season at Notre came as a sophomore in 2016, when he was named Offensive Player of the Year at Notre Dame after leading the Fighting Irish with 58 catches for 961 yards and nine touchdowns. He was fifth in the nation in receiving yards among underclassmen that season, and ranked among the country’s top 40 receivers in both receiving touchdowns and receiving yards.
“I definitely expected to go higher,” St. Brown said on a conference call on Saturday. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed, but now it’s over. Now it’s behind me. Now I just have to play football.”
Scott Wright of draftcoutdown.com said before the draft that St. Brown would have benefitted from staying at Notre Dame another year.
“I think that he’s intriguing,” Wright said of St. Brown. “He profiles, at least physically, as a No. 1 wide receiver. It’s just that poor quarterback play really limited him last year. He’s probably the guy who would have benefitted the most from coming back for another year. If he got better quarterback play, put up better numbers, had more opportunities to showcase his talent, I think you could make the case that he could have played himself into the first round (in 2019).”
St. Brown will team up with Aaron Rodgers, one of the top quarterbacks in the NHL.
“I’m definitely ready to start playing football,” St. Brown said. “I’ve never been so ready for anything in my life.”
St. Brown comes from an athletic family.
One younger brother, Osiris, plays wide receiver for Stanford, and another, Amon-Ra, plays wide receiver for USC.
His father, John Brown, was a two-time Mr. Universe, who had Equanimeous lifting weights at the age of 7.
“To me and my brothers, it was normal,” St. Brown said. “We still had time to do all the fun activities with our friends. But we got our work done first with my mom, the education, and with my dad athletically. We always figured out a way to fit everything into our days and we still had a lot of free time.”
Another aspect that may make St. Brown stand out among his teammates at Notre Dame is his ability to speak German and French. His mother, Miriam Brown, was born in Germany spoke only German at home.