As Sunday afternoon approaches, the Cleveland Browns are preparing to host the Dallas Cowboys at Huntington Bank Field. With that preparation comes the week of practice and the release of the midweek injury report. And according to the report released by the Browns. The team is healthy for the first time since November of 2023.

All Cleveland Browns 53 active players on the roster participated in practice for the week. Left tackle Jed Wills did say that he didn’t expect to start on Sunday against Dallas. Fellow offensive tackle Jack Conklin is expected to get the start in the season opener. Both Wills and Conklin were removed from the PUP (physically unable to perform) list last week. These moves showed the overall strategy of player health and availability the Browns had in the preseason.

The Cleveland Browns barely played any starters in the 3 preseason games in 2024. This was criticized by fans, pundits, and podcasters. Whether or not this was the right move, time will tell us. In 2023 the biggest obstacle that the Cleveland Browns faced were injuries. 26% of the team’s salary cap was on the injured reserve list. The Cleveland Browns had to start 5 different quarterbacks. And despite that they finished the 2023 season with an 11-6 record and made the NFL playoffs as the 5th seed AFC wildcard team.

The thought process of both general manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski is to get players healthy and ready to play on September 8th. The criticism for this strategy is that players will be rusty for the start of the season. The Cleveland Browns leadership was willing to take that risk. They felt healthy and rusty starter is better than not having them at all. Not playing veteran players in the preseason is nothing new. It is new to the Browns. And so are the high expectations of the 2024 season.