Browns coach Freddie Kitchens: Team supporting Kareem Hunt 'as a person'
Kareem Hunt was baptized over the weekend. He said he wanted to “feel reborn.”
The Cleveland Browns brass seems fully committed to giving Hunt his second chance. Coach Freddie Kitchens and general manager John Dorsey attended the baptism in Cleveland.
Hunt was cut by the Kansas City Chiefs after a video showed him shoving and kicking a woman in a hotel. The Browns signed him, and it was for football reasons. Hunt led the NFL in rushing yards as a rookie in 2017.
But the Browns want to tell everyone how much they care about Hunt as a person.
Freddie Kitchens wanted to support Kareem Hunt
Kitchens explained why he and Dorsey found their way to Hunt’s baptism.
"I just know that we wanted to know that he felt supported as a person," Kitchens said on Monday at the Cleveland Browns Foundation's golf tournament, according to ESPN.com. "That's what I told him and John (Dorsey) has told him when we were talking to him when he first got here. And that's not lip service from me and that's not lip service from John Dorsey.
“The thing we did yesterday was not about football at all, it was about Kareem as the person."
That’s a positive way to spin it. Maybe they’d have done the same for a player who wasn’t 23 years old and had 1,327 rushing yards as a rookie with Kansas City.
Hunt tries to change his image
Signing a player who was on video kicking a woman is obviously controversial. The Browns took some heat when they signed Hunt, and now they’ll try to put a positive spin on it.
Hunt spoke last week to the Cleveland media. He talked about how he has changed and is making better decisions. The story of his baptism, and the Browns coach and GM attending, is the next part of the story.
Hopefully Hunt doesn’t have any more issues. And hopefully the Browns would still support him if he couldn’t help them at running back.
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Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
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