There are many lessons to be learned in the preseason. Browns coach Kevin Stefanski wants his players to learn an important one.
Take a punch. Don’t throw a punch.
Meeting with reporters on Monday, Stefanski explained the strategic value to letting an opponent get his swings in. He gets kicked out of the game. The player who gets punched does not.
“We never, ever, ever, ever, ever want to throw a punch,” Stefanski said. “It gets you thrown out immediately. I saw the whole thing happen. They were locked up. Their player got off, I think, three punches before Rayshawn [Jenkins] threw a punch. And that’s a great opportunity for them to lose their guy, we keep our guy. It’s our advantage. We negated that advantage by retaliating. So that was not a smart play by a smart football player, a smart man, who I have a ton of respect for, but we got to learn from that, and we can’t let another player, their aggression bait us into getting thrown out of a game.”
Basically, Stefanski would have preferred that, on Friday night, Jenkins had taken the punches and accepted the benefit that would have come from the Panthers losing receiver Xavier Legette and the Browns losing no one.
And while it’s easier said than done to just take punches without punching back, all players need to realize that, if the other guy starts swinging fists, the best play is to let it happen.
