DE Chase Winovich (11.7.22)
On returning to practice today:
“It felt great being back out there. Feel like this is déjà vu unfortunately. I am happy to be back. It is really great to have such supportive teammates. They announced I was coming back in the meeting today, and people cheered and stuff. It made me feel pretty good about it. I have been working really hard. The training staff and the coaches have provided a lot of expertise, time, attention and a lot of love just trying to get me back out there ready to battle, and the time has come. Just taking things one day at a time. It is pretty great.”
On he was able to apply lessons from past hamstring injuries while rehabbing the past few weeks:
“I think if you zoom in on anybody’s story, I think there are always going to be times where you are going to be faced with adversity. Going back to last season – I already talked about this in the last interview – having surgery, coming back from that, working my way on the field and back in the rotation and pulling my hamstring this year and pulling my hamstring again, you zoom in and it is part of the adversity. You are going to have injuries, a 100-percent injury rate in the NFL. It is the unfortunate truth. I just learned that there are always better ways to do things. There are always lessons to be learned. Sometimes when you are winning and everything is going great, you might overlook those. The second thing I learned is that when you have an injury so oftentimes it is not even the sight of the injury itself, it is other things that you may have gotten away with in the past that you just have to evolve your game, and you have to be able to figure out ways to strengthen those and learn from those things.”
On how he and his teammates used the bye week:
“Great question. I think these things are really important. I think the timing of everything and eating the Bengals obviously was very important from a standpoint of like, ‘Listen, we can play with anybody. We can win. Everything is still in front of us.’ Ultimately, going into a bye week being able to kind of reset with that mindset, ‘Listen we have a good team here, a lot of really good players, good coaches and a lot of pieces. Let’s come back, let’s take some time off, spend it with our family and loved ones, come back refreshed and recharged and make this push.’ The energy was really high today at practice, and we are just going to keep it going.”
On if it was hard to remain positive when sustaining multiple injuries during his time with the Browns:
“Like I said, when you zoom in on anybody’s story, there are going to be times and it was just the reality of the situation that it was really hard. When I got hurt the first or second play of the Jets game, I had my whole family there – there was like 12 of them – I just said, ‘There is no way I am going out like that.’ Then after the game, knowing that I had pulled it before the MRI, that was really challenging for me. It was one of those moments when I had a former Patriots teammate, he said, ‘Moments like these are going to take a lot of resolve.’ I am here, and I felt great at practice. Just keep it pushing baby. That is it.”
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