PROFILES: ANTONIO BROWN

Day 1 of the Pittsburgh Steelers OTAs. In the back corner of the end zone, Antonio Brown reached around cornerback Artie Burns, who was positioned in front of him, and somehow caught a pass from Ben Roethlisberger. One of the officials hired to work practice signaled Brown’s foot was out of bounds.

“I was in, huh?” Brown said. “I thought it was good.” And it’s only June.

That is Antonio Brown, always working, always competing, always striving to be better than anyone else on the field. Doesn’t matter if it’s a spring practice with his teammates or the postseason in January. Brown knows only one way, one speed. Full bore ahead.

It would have been easy for Brown to excuse himself from the three-week OTAs that concluded Thursday. After catching more passes in a four-year span (481) than any player in NFL history and signing a record contract for a wide receiver (five years, $72.7 million) in February, it would have been perfectly understandable if he missed more than a few days of spring practice.

“I need to get better, and I try to evolve my game to get better in every aspect.” Really? Opponents should be scared.

One of the more difficult decisions in my selection process of the 2016 edition of "Los 11 de Deion" was the inclusion of Brown as the second wide receiver opposite Julio Jones. Brown´s slide in yards production (from 1834yds in 2015 to 1284 in 2016) was noticeable. After some thought I decided to bet on Brown, the deciding factor being his eight touchdowns from outside the red zone. That´s a feat only reachable for the super stars of the game.

Now that we are in the offseason I came back to Brown´s tape from the 2016 season to study those scores. The result is our first video for the new section "Profiles". Here we will take a deep look at the play of the greatest players in the game. Hope you enjoy it: