Antonio Brown didn’t exactly have the most illustrious beginning to his playoff career—well, actually he did, but then it subsided for a long while. In his first playoff game, in a Divisional Round game against the Ravens during his rookie season while he was still deep down on the depth chart, he made a game-changing 58-yard reception on third and 19 that helped lead to the eventual game-winning drive.
Outside of that lone reception, he played in three playoff games as a rookie, adding an additional four receptions for 32 yards, with no touchdowns. The following year, as he ascended up the depth chart, he caught five passes for 70 yards in a Wildcard Round loss.
The Steelers missed the playoffs in his next two seasons before returning during the 2014 season, again to face the Ravens. In this game, he caught nine passes for 117 yards and nearly had a touchdown of is own, even though it, unfortunately, came in a losing effort.
Last season, Pittsburgh returned to the postseason for another year, and he caught another seven passes for 119 yards against the Bengals. But he took a hit to his head on the eventual game-winning drive that knocked him out for the remainder of the postseason, which for the Steelers lasted just one more game without him.
On Sunday, Brown recorded his third consecutive postseason 100-yard receiving game against the Dolphins, catching just five passes but for a postseason career-high 124 receiving yards. The fact majority of that yardage came on receptions of 50 and 62 yards in the first half of the first quarter, both of which went for the first two postseason touchdowns of his career.
In recording three consecutive 100-yard games during his postseason career, Brown joins a pretty small fraternity of just six players who have ever accomplished that feat going back all the way to 1920, according to the ever-helpful Pro Football Reference. And the only player who did it before the late 80s was Tom Fears, who gained 480 yards for the Rams over three games between 1950 and 1951.
Also on the list are Jerry Rice, Randy Moss, and T.Y. Hilton, no names that should be of a great shock. Heading the list, however, is Larry Fitzgerald, who is currently the only player to have put together four consecutive 100-yard receiving games in the postseason.
Fitzgerald, you might recall, had arguably the single greatest postseason run by a wide receiver in NFL history during the playoffs for the 2008 season, during which he and his Cardinals nearly toppled the Steelers in the Super Bowl. During those four games, he caught 30 passes for 546 yards and seven touchdowns.
Brown can join Fitzgerald on Sunday as the only two players in NFL history to have posted four consecutive 100-yard games in the postseason, but he will have work to do if he wants to duplicate Fitzgerald’s feat of achieving that in just one postseason. Brown’s games are spread out over three years.
