The Jarvis Landry revenge game is Sunday. Can he keep emotions in check vs. Dolphins?
Jarvis Landry runs on adrenaline and slights.
Expect the fiery Browns receiver to be fully charged Sunday, then, when he gets his long-awaited revenge game with the Miami Dolphins.
Landry faces his old team for the first time since the Dolphins traded him to the Browns for two third-day picks in early 2018.
“It’s definitely an emotional period for me, just knowing that was the place I was drafted at, a lot of history,” Landry told the Akron Beacon Journal this week. “A lot of the things I did career-wise started there. It’s going to be good to see a couple guys that I still have contact with and play against them.”
Landry, who was not made available by the Browns to South Florida media this week, said he still keeps in contact with several current Dolphins, including receivers DeVante Parker and Jakeem Grant.
But aside from that, it’s basically an entirely different team than the one he left.
Even the coach who once loved him and then dumped him is gone. Adam Gase is now in New York with the Jets. Perhaps Landry holds some ill-will toward Chris Grier, but it’s not like the Dolphins general manager will be on the field Sunday.
“I don’t really hold onto it,” Landry said. “At the time when it happened, maybe then, just how things were communicated. Now I’m happy to be here. ... This is definitely one of the games that I knew in two years I’d get a chance to have. I’m happy it’s here.”
Landry’s time in Miami ended, in part, because of his on-field behavior at the end. When he was barking at Gase on the sidelines, he was getting ejected for fighting. It was time for all sides to move on.
But his new coach, Freddie Kitchens, suggested Landry has had no problem keeping his emotions in check as a Brown.
“I’ve never had any problems at all out of Jarvis,” Kitchens said. “He’s a competitor. He competes every day in practice and competes of course in the games.”
Homecoming king
Jerome Baker will have a bit of extra juice Sunday too, but for entirely different reasons. The Dolphins linebacker returns home to face the team he supported as a kid.
He has at least 20 friends and family members attending Sunday’s game in Cleveland, his hometown.
“A lot of my family hasn’t seen me play in person in the league,” Baker said. “My grandparents are older so they can’t really travel as much. Only my parents have seen me really play. Everybody else has seen me on TV. To see them before the game, after the game, is going to be a different feeling. I’m definitely excited.”
