Andrew Berry Says Browns Taking Conservative Approach To Nick Chubb Return

The Browns are getting their heartbeat back in 2024. It's just a matter of when.

After reworking his contract several weeks back, running back Nick Chubb is slated to return to the field at some point next fall following a gruesome knee injury that required multiple surgeries. While all the updates on Chubb have been positive to this point, Browns general manager Andrew Berry shared the latest on his recovery during aninterview on 92.3 The Fan's Ken Carman Show with Anthony Lima on Thursday. There is a caveat though, no one really knows when he's going to be ready to play next season.

"Nick's feeling pretty good." said Berry. "He's doing a really nice job in his rehab. Still got a long way to go but he's progressing nicely at this point in time."

With Chubb's availability unknown, Berry and his staff have bolstered the running back depth chart around him. Both Jerome Ford and Pierre Strong are slated to be back from last year's group. Now, Cleveland has added veterans Nyheim Hines and D'Onta Foreman into the mix as well.

That roster of tailbacks should provide the Browns with plenty of options to hold down the fort until Chubb is ready. Still, there's a lot of unknowns when it comes to the four-time All-Pro running back.

The Georgia product entered the NFL having suffered one serious knee injury in college. Now he's added two more to the mix, as he approaches the age of 30 no less. People should bet against Chubb at their own peril. If there's anyone who could defy father time with re-structured knees it may just be him. But even Berry couldn't deny that they approach situations like Chubb's cautiously optimistic. It's part of the reason why they felt so inclined to tweak his deal and lower his cap hit for 2024. There's a lot of unknowns right now.

"One of the biggest roster building challenges is when you're trying to plan out a position group when you have the availability of a player is unknown," Berry explained. "Whether it's because they're coming off a season-ending injury, whether it's because they maybe have some injury history where they're probably going to miss some games – that can be really tough to plan around. Those cases, we usually plan pretty conservatively in terms of on the more negative side of the the expectation for their availability. There's just more downside if you assume well, they're gonna be on the front end of rehabilitation and we're gonna build the roster that way and then you get surprised. Positive surprises are always always a good thing. So you want to kind of plan conservatively even if you know you're being conservative in that moment."

Taking a pragmatic approach my not be what fans want to hear, but at the end of the day the NFL is a business. And Berry has to consider what life without Chubb could look like beyond this upcoming season, in the event that he's just not the same player.

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