I have never seen a checklist that had brakes off as a prelanding check, I have always tought " brakes -- Pedals firm " as a quick squeeze on the pedal /brake handle in order to ensure the brakes are still there when you land. I once had a flight in a Seneca where the brakes worked fine on the ground but all the fluid leaked out in flight. I was more than a little surprised when I did a brake check and the pedals flopped to th floor
. I informed ATC and put the airplane down at the very beginning of the runway at min safe airspeed and it still took almost 6000 feet to stop
A final niggly point about the brakes -presure check call discussed in a earlier post. I believe the check calls should be what is actually checked. Since almost all light airplanes do not have a brake pressure guage you cannot check the brake pressure. Therefore the check should say what you are actually doing which is checking that the pedals are firm. The only exception I have encountered was a Nanchang CJ6 which had a brake airpressure guage directly showing the airpressure at the wheel brake bladders... and the Chipmunk of course with its goofy
system.