Robiskie advises team: take a break

He thinks all the off-season work has led to the rash of injuries.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Browns interim coach Terry Robiskie is advising his players to not think about football or lift a weight for the next few months.
For four years under ex-coach Butch Davis, Browns players were bullied into reporting to off-season conditioning five or six weeks before the official program kicked off in March.
"I've never been on a team where guys come back so early," Robiskie said. "We've got guys last year who came back the last week of January and were lifting, running. I've never been anywhere where guys did it so long so hard."
Robiskie didn't blame Davis' strict regimen on the team's chronic injuries. But he didn't rule it out either.
"There's only so much a body's got in it. There's only so many lifts, so many pumps, so many jogs," Robiskie said. "There's only so many days your body can take it."
Difference in philosophy
The Browns rank second in the league with 15 players on injured reserve. Eight of them are starters. In the four seasons under Davis, the Browns annually ranked high in this dubious category, averaging nearly 14 players on injured reserve.
Davis would "encourage" players who finished the season on injured reserve to start training in January.
Robiskie suggested other young players would report early on their own, including players who sought to make good impressions with Davis or feared for their jobs.
Veteran safety Earl Little said that after the 2002 playoff season, more than 20 players were regular visitors to the Browns' weight room in January and February.
Little charged that Davis forced players to sign "side letters" to their standard player contracts that called for them to give back portions of their signing bonuses if they did not reach 80 percent attendance in the team's off-season conditioning program.
"Coach Davis made working out mandatory. That's against the rules," Little said. Little said he reported the violation to Buffalo cornerback Troy Vincent, president of the players association, but nothing came of it because Little could not produce a copy of the side letter.
He said he agreed to sign it "because I just had a baby boy, and the money was there, so I had to sign it, and I wasn't happy about it."
Robiskie said if he were the full-time head coach, shortening the off-season program would be high on his list of changes.
"I played for John Madden, played for Al Davis. John Madden's mind-set was, 'You need to get away physically and mentally and go hide and recover,' " Robiskie said.