BEREA, Ohio — Cleveland Browns coach Freddie Kitchens has never seen anything like what happened during last Friday’s practice ahead of the Sunday Night Football game against the Los Angeles Rams at FirstEnergy Stadium, and if it is all the same, he never wants to see it again.
The Browns lost cornerback Denzel Ward due to a hamstring injury, and then, just 10 minutes later, fellow defensive back Greedy Williams suffered a similar injury. Both players missed the 20-13 loss to the Rams because of their injuries.
“It wasn’t too funny for me on Friday,” Kitchens said. “I think we need to look at it individually and collectively and make sure that we are doing everything we need to. It probably falls more on the player knows what he needs, but I don’t really have an answer.
“I wish I did have an answer. I will just be totally transparent. I just know individually, we need to make sure we are doing what we need to do to make sure we are ready. The thing that throws you off in that is that it happened one period into practice. It was not like we weren’t stretched, warmed up and ready to go and we hadn’t been doing things already.”
By their own accounts, neither Williams nor Ward had ever dealt with hamstring injuries prior to last Friday’s practice.
“It’s crazy,” Ward said. “I had a hamstring kind of pulled on me a little bit, and a few plays later, same thing happened to Greedy and then (Sheldrick) Redwine. I think he was also kind hurting, but it was definitely crazy, unexpected.”
Williams added, “It was very difficult. I have never missed a game in my life. Then boom, I come to the NFL and missed my third game. It was very difficult. I was just telling my coach, ‘Man, it is really eating me up just missing my first game.’ I am just ready to get back out there.”
Williams started running Monday and is taking the “process day by day and just easing his way back in” to practice.
And when Williams returns to practice, his routine will include a little more prep work.
“Most definitely, doing a lot more stretching than I was doing,” Williams said. “Getting a lot more massages than I was getting. Like [T.J. Carrie], he pulled a hammy in training camp, so I went up to him and asked him how he recovered from his injury. He gave me a lot of steps on what he did and the extra things he did after treatment. Just taking his footsteps and getting back to 100 percent is one of the goals right now.”
According to Kitchens, the Browns are going to have all players, not just Williams, Ward and those sharing similar soft-tissue injuries, working on developing endurance along with conditioning.
“The difference between being in shape and endurance is huge because having endurance is being able to play football play over and over and over and over again,” Kitchens said. “We want to build endurance with our guys.
“I have never seen it, so hopefully, I never see it again.”