'Got to come out and fight again': Cleveland Browns' Odell Beckham Jr. details 'spiritual healing' in recovery

Browns receiver Odell Beckham Jr. wasn’t ready to declare that he will make his long-awaited return Sunday against the Chicago Bears.

“We’ll see. I’m taking it a day at a time. Everything is going smooth … Everything feels good,” Beckham said before practice Thursday.

“The original plan before even seeing the schedule, it was 11 months post-op and now I’m at right around 10½,” he said. Asked if he is still ahead of schedule, he said, “I guess you could say that.”

But the three-time Pro Bowler made it clear that unlike his two previous operations, his journey back from Nov. 10 surgery to repair the torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee has been more of a “spiritual healing.”

Beckham, 28, said he never considered retirement after he suffered the injury in an Oct. 25 road game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

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“You’ve seen the stories when I was 23, 24 years old and talking about just being done with the game,” he said. “This time it never really crossed my mind. I wasn’t going to give up. I’m not the kind of fighter who got knocked out [in] the last fight and I’m going to hang it up. I’ve got to come out and fight again.”

Beckham was a full participant in practice Wednesday for the first time since he returned to the field. 

Beckham suffered a serious ankle injury when he was with the New York Giants in 2017 and underwent hernia surgery after the 2019 season in Cleveland. Hie said this rehab was different than those two.

“This is the third time going through surgery and it’s just a different feeling,” he said.  "The first time when I came back from the ankle, it was tough to overcome that. I felt like this time it was a lot easier of a process, more of a spiritual healing I would say.”

In his eighth season, it would make sense that he would start to consider how much longer his career will last.

“When I hurt my ankle it kind of was devastating to get on the surgery table,” Beckham said. “For hernia surgery, it's devastating, knee injury, it's devastating. But it's just about your why and what do you do it for and for me, for the kids out there who have that feeling of wanting to give up on something.

"That's all I can think about is what message would I send to them by giving up now because I haven't reached the goals that I wanted to reach, the accomplishments, the things that I set are in sight are still not out of sight for me, so I just find a way to keep going, be resilient and try to find a way to get better each and every day."