Antonio Brown caught so many passes for the 2014 Pittsburgh Steelers that it sometimes seemed like Ben Roethlisberger needed no other targets. He caught so many passes — 129 in the 16 regular season games and nine more in the Wild Card playoff loss to Baltimore, to be exact. Both of those figures were highest in the NFL during the season and in the Ravens-Steelers Wild Card playoff game. He gained so, so many yards. He gained an absurd 1,698 receiving yards, also most in the league.
Brown had a career high 13 touchdowns, as well. His exquisite season overshadowed many other good performances by his teammates, with the certain exception of Roethlisberger (tied for the league lead with Drew Brees at 4,952 passing yards) and Le’Veon Bell (second in the league with 1,361 rushing yards and total yards of offense by a running back or wide receiver).
Aside from Brown and his remarkable streak of consecutive games with at least five receptions and 50 yards, which now stands at 32 games (an NFL record), another truly bright spot emerged in the second half in the form of rookie Martavis Bryant. The 23 year-old, fourth-round draft pick out of Clemson was fifth on the Steelers in receptions (26), targets (49) and yards (549), behind Brown, Bell, Heath Miller and Markus Wheaton in those categories. Bryant averaged a team-high 21.1 yards per reception, which would have been best in the NFL too had he qualified. Having played in just ten regular season games, beginning in Week 7 against Houston, Bryant did not have the minimum number of receptions to qualify for the league lead in any category, but 21.1 yards per reception on 26 catches is pretty indicative of the youngster’s big-play ability.
Bryant was also second on the Steelers in receiving touchdowns with eight and in receiving yards per game, and he had a team-high long scoring play of 94 yards. In the Ravens game, he had five grabs for 61 yards and the team’s only touchdown, a six-yard score early in the fourth quarter that temporarily put Pittsburgh back in the game.
A relative unknown when drafted as a Steeler, Bryant played three years at a strong ACC program, winning a conference championship in 2011 and the 2014 Orange Bowl. He is 6’4″ and was taken in the fourth round, very much in the shadow of his teammate Sammy Watkins, who was taken in the first round (fourth overall) by the Buffalo Bills. Watkins had a strong season and could possibly finish in the top five in offensive rookie of the year voting. His star power at Clemson and appeal in the NFL draft are very similar to the current attention demanded by Brown this season for the Steelers, so Bryant is used to playing second fiddle in a passing offense. He definitely does not look at it that way though; instead, Brown has been an exemplary mentor.
“I learned a lot from how to run routes, how to work in practice,” said Bryant. “We’re going to get together in the offseason, go down to Miami and get a couple weeks of training in with him.”
An offseason and a full year of growth and experience playing with Roethlisberger, Brown and in Todd Haley’s offensive schemes can only aid Bryant in improving on an impressive first professional season. In the somber aftermath of experiencing his first loss in a big game on the national NFL stage, Bryant was aware of what had gone wrong and how fixing it should be approached moving forward. He had a positive and determined attitude and expects to continue to make a major impact as a potentially impossible receiver to cover.
“We can’t blame not having Le’Veon,” Bryant explained. “We know Le’Veon is a great back but we’ve got other people that have a job as well and can show what they have. Things just didn’t go our way and, unfortunately, we just have to regroup and get better.”
While many aspects of a game cannot be controlled by any single player, Martavis is not worried about the state of the defense or the slew of veteran players who may not return to the locker room and the field next season in black and gold. Instead, his primary concern is increasingly becoming one half of a threatening one-two punch in Haley and Roethlisberger’s air attack.
“Monday, we watch the tape and figure out how we can be better,” he said. “Football is football and we’ve been playing together since the offseason, and we want to go out there and have fun. It’ll be more fun when we can celebrate instead of feeling like this.”
As long as the trio of “Big Ben”, Brown and Bell are on the attack, Bryant may well make it a quartet of “Killer B’s” moving forward. With a nose for the end zone and an undeniably impactful presence in an offense that exploded as soon as he stepped on the field in October against the Texans, Colts and Ravens during a high-scoring winning streak, the Steelers may have mined a gem in the middle rounds of last year’s draft.
