Kevin Johnson spent two nights in a hospital in August after a freakish training camp injury. Johnson somehow managed to lacerate his liver in an end zone collision during a drill in Cleveland Browns camp.
On Monday, the veteran cornerback returned to the practice field for the first time since the unusual injury. Johnson also met with the media to discuss the serious-sounding wound, his return to practice and more.
The obvious question for Johnson deals with reinjuring the vital organ. Johnson legitimately doesn’t seem too concerned.
“No, and that is the one thing that just going through the process that all the doctors informed me is that once the wound is healed up, it is healed up,” Johnson said on the Zoom session. “It is not like a hamstring that lingers or any type of injury that lingers on. My liver is healed up 100 percent, and I feel normal. I feel like I did right before I injured it.”
Johnson admitted, “I felt like I was having a pretty good camp, and it was just beginning.” He thrived in the competition for the slot CB role, a position he played well in Buffalo in 2019 after years of injury struggles with the Houston Texans.
So what is it like to slice open your liver?
“It was discomfort,” Johnson said. “It was just very uncomfortable. It was very uncomfortable. Like I said, I could not really breathe. I could not really breathe, and it was long. It was kind of a long time where I was kind of just trying to get my breath back to normal. My stomach felt full. I felt like I had drank a lot of water or something like that. I was just like yeah, something is going on inside of my body. I thought I cracked my rib or something, which I had never done before. I just felt something was a little off.”
Johnson was one of three defensive players to return to Browns practice on Monday, joining fellow CB Greedy Williams and LB Mack Wilson. All have been sidelined since suffering injuries in the same week in training camp.
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