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CLEVELAND —** A hospital visit helped offer Browns rookie quarterback DeShone Kizer and several of his teammates perspective earlier this week.

"There's a lot that goes on the season as far as football goes and we spend quite a bit of time preparing for each week. But it's all good for us to put things in perspective, to take our minds off of football and realize what we actually do this for," Kizer said. "And it's for the people who are out there and fight every day for things that are a lot bigger than football."

Kizer, Danny Shelton, Larry Ogunjobi, Shon Coleman, Randall Telfer, Marcus Martin and J.P. Holtz visited University Hospitals' Seidman Cancer Center on Tuesday as part of Browns Give Back's support of Crucial Catch and Breast Cancer Awareness Month 

The team passed out gifts and cookies to patients, smiled for photos and thanked UH's medical staff for their daily contributions. The group also delivered Browns hats to the hospital's Le Salon, a free nail and wig salon that is part of the American Cancer Society Wig Salon Program for patients in the Seidman Cancer Center.

"It was really an awesome time to come in and meet with some of the people going through tough times," Kizer said.

Everybody was beaming and it was just a break in the trauma they are going through," added Jill Dietz,  the director of Breast Center Operations at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. "It put a smile on everybody's face."

The Browns will support Breast Cancer Awareness Month, supporting the American Cancer Society and the team's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer initiative as part of the "A Crucial Catch" campaign, throughout October and during Sunday's game against the Jets. Along with other awareness components, the Browns will recognize a group of breast cancer survivors pregame through the American Cancer Society.

Dietz, who will serve as an honorary coin toss captain Sunday, outlined why it's important to continue raising awareness about breast cancer and the treatment options available.

"I think it's important because I've been taking care of breast cancer patients for 20 years, I still see people coming in with advanced cancers and really when we find cancers early by getting in and getting mammogram, we can take care of them and we can beat it," she said. "We have the people and the means and the technology to take care of patients with breast cancer. We just have to find them."

Kizer, who joined Cleveland this past spring, has already entrenched himself in the community by partnering with University Hospitals.

"When I first got here in Cleveland, one of the first things I wanted to do was create a relationship with an organization who's helping, and University Hospitals was one of the first people I met with," he said.

"Spent quite a bit of time here and now we've created a partnership where I can get back and forth here as much as I can on our off days, and our bye week and throughout the offseason and spend time with some of the patients here to make my impact off the field just as big as I can on the field."

This year, the NFL and American Cancer Society are broadening the scope of their efforts to tackle multiple types of cancer, in additional to breast cancer. For more information on the "A Crucial Catch" campaign, visit www.nfl.com/crucialcatch.

About the Cleveland Browns and Browns Give Back:

The Browns Give Back to Northeast Ohio with a commitment to education and youth football while engaging the community through the team's signature First and Ten volunteer movement. For more information, visit www.clevelandbrowns.com/brownsgiveback.