By ZAC BOYER | zboyer@freelancestar.com | @ZacBoyer

Washington Redskins strong safety LaRon Landry said Thursday night the injury to his left Achiles’ tendon is different than the one he sustained a year before and that his choice to not undergo surgery but instead elect for alternative procedures is not being done “to try to make it controversial.”

Landry

“All I can say is, I’m going to do whatever I can do to play at a high level, no matter what,” Landry told 106.7 The Fan’s Grant Paulsen in a 15-minute radio interview. “I mean, it’s my body. I’m going to do what I think is right.”

Landry, 27, originally sustained microtears in the tendon midway through the 2010 season and missed the final seven games. He was slow to heal, missing all of training camp and the first two games this past season, and then battled related groin and hamstring injuries over the coming months before being placed on injured reserve on Dec. 6.

In all, Landry has missed 16 of his last 33 games, including eight this past season. It was his first sustained inactivity since entering the league as the sixth overall pick by the Redskins in 2007.

“From my freshman year in college [at Louisiana State], until then, that’s right, I never missed a game,” Landry said. “I’m not injury prone. I’m going to get that corrected right now. I’m doing everything in my power to get back out there and for me to heal, no matter what.”

Landry told Paulsen the injury is different this time around than the one he sustained in November 2010. It’s lower in the Achilles’ tendon, he said, and because surgery would keep him out until July or August, at the earliest, he wanted to try to find a way to get back on the field quicker.

There are incentives to Landry doing so. The strong safety is an unrestricted free agent this offseason, and though he said he would like to return to the Redskins – “I love being a Washingtonian all-around,” Landry said – he didn’t want to address contract matters on Thursday.

“I’m not going to get into a contract discussion,” Landry told Paulsen. “This is strictly to talk about my injury, and there’s nothing going on with it. As far as my contract, the GM of the organization and my agent will talk about that. I can’t do anything about it, except for get healthy, get out there and prepare to play at a high level and be one of those elite players that I know how to be. That’s my focus and that’s it.”

The strong safety prefers not to speak about his health, but first spoke to a writer from BleacherReport.com earlier this week. The confusing story only raised more questions about Landry’s choice to not undergo surgery on the tendon after the season.

Paulsen, in a 15-minute interview with Landry, said there has been “a little bit of a disconnect between what the team thinks you should be doing and how you think you should be recovering.”

Landry responded, saying the platelet-rich-plasma (PRP) treatment he underwent last offseason to recover from a shoulder injury, rather than surgery, worked fine, and he has been of the belief that a similar procedure would help with the tendon as well.

As for surgery, which, in mid-December, Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan said Landry was recommended to have following a consultation with Dr. Robert Anderson, Landry didn’t believe it was the best option.

That means he has paid for the stem cell and PRP treatments this offseason on his own, as opposed to having the team pay for them. He was convinced of their effectiveness, he said, after seeing Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant and New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, both elite players in their own right, have success with similar prodecures.

“I mean, it’s brutal, you know?” Landry said of the surgery. “It’s like a roller coaster. A major surgery is quite hard. You’re changing the structure of your body and trying to correct it. Basically, it’s crucial – recovery time is crucial, rehab is crucial and you sometimes lose range-of-motion and lose strength. The strength will eventually come, but as far as range of motion – sometimes you might not get the same thing that you had before. … I don’t want that, so that’s why I said I wouldn’t do it.”

Landry had 48 tackles this past season, but had 85 in 2010 before the injury and averaged nearly 77 over his first three years. He’s convinced he can return to that level.

“Basically, I love the Redskins fans, the organization, my teammates,” Landry said. “I just want them to know that I’m doing everything in my power to return at a high level and help win ballgames and win championships.”