Marquise Brown doesn't have a hands problem. After three potential touchdown passes bounced off his hands in Detroit, the question was about where his head is at.
Judging by his big smile (and answers) Friday as he took questions from reporters, it seems "Hollywood" is doing just fine.
"Just move on, next play," Brown said. "You can't dwell on the past play. You've got to move on and put the best effort forward for the next play."
Last season, Brown had a midseason stretch of a few games in which he struggled with drops. That was snapped when he hauled in a game-winning score in the wild Lamar Jackson cramps game in Cleveland.
Brown proceeded to go on a tear down the stretch and in the playoffs, which he carried over into the first two weeks of this season with 12 catches for 182 yards and two touchdowns.
Now Brown will go about making sure one tough performance doesn't bleed into the next.
Head Coach John Harbaugh said Brown had an "excellent" week of practice. Brown stayed after Friday's practice with Pass Game Specialist Keith Williams and caught soccer balls, a drill the wide receivers also did in training camp that gets them to focus on getting their hands wide and watching the ball in.
"Just go back to work," Brown said. "Pay attention to the details and just keep doing what we've been doing. Not going to let one game [deviate] from the plan we've got."
The silver lining of Brown's game in Detroit is that he still caught three passes for 53 yards and broke away from his defender several other times. He could have had a monster day. If Brown keeps getting open like that, he's going to have a very good season. He's still on pace for 1,331 receiving yards.
"We're just going to play ball – do what he's been doing," Jackson said this week. "We're not worried about the Detroit game; it's over with. He caught passes during that game. It's just mishaps. It happens sometimes to the best, and we're not worried about it. In Denver, I know he's going to have a strong game – for sure."
Brown said on of the three "drops" (the first one in the end zone) was actually tipped by a defender first, but that detail didn't matter to him. He expects to catch everything and there were reasons for the drops, including not looking the ball all the way in.
"I definitely can point out some [mistakes]," Brown said. "But the fact of the matter is, it's just unacceptable. You don't ever want to go out there and drop a layup, drop an open pass. I've been working too hard on my route-running and separation to drop the ball when I'm open."
It can be a lonely place after a game like that. But Jackson's 4th-and-19 pass and Justin Tucker's 66-yard record-breaker pulled out the win anyway, which probably helped Brown move past it. His drops were painful, but it didn't cost his quarterback or team a win.
Social media, on the other hand, doesn't care about wins and losses – unless it's for fantasy football teams. When Brown was asked how he handled the social media backlash this week, he grinned. He didn't run from it.
"I'm on social media all the time," he said. "It's funny to me. In this day and age, it's how you look at it. I look at it the same way. If I'm on the outside and I've got this dude on fantasy and he out here … I'm going to laugh with him. It's all fun and games. I don't look at social media too serious."
