Cleveland Browns running back Peyton Hillis has always been a hard charger

Peyton Hillis likes to run through stuff and break stuff and show off his brute strength whenever possible. He always has. And Cleveland Browns fans love the young running back for all his bruising ways.  

BEREA, Ohio — People in Conway, Ark., still talk about the time Peyton Hillis first became a local legend. It was the summer before his senior year at Conway High School in Arkansas, and Hillis was sweet on a pretty girl, so he wanted to show off a little.

He already had sprouted to his current height of 6-foot-1, was already a sturdy 220 pounds and already had a bit of a reputation as a somewhat brawny brute. So he and a buddy drove a big ol' pickup truck out to the street where the girl happened to live, attached a rope to the front of the truck and slung it around Hillis' waist.

And he pulled.

"I guess because he can," laughed Kenny Smith, Hillis' high school football coach.

Hillis ran up and down the street all day long, tugging the massive truck behind him in what he told everyone was merely his newest workout. But he also happened to win the heart of the understandably impressed girl and solidify his place in strongman lore -- at least in the middle-Arkansas town of about 40,000 people. It wasn't long before the story spread from house to house, and Conway children tried the same maneuver with go-karts, dragging them down streets to gain strength.

And to be like Hillis, the local high school football star.

Thus, the legend of Hillis began. The 24-year-old Browns running back is the kind of bulging-muscle, perpetually black-and-blue player who merely has to play his run-into-people style of game to win the hearts of all of working-class Cleveland. But he's also got the aw-shucks, humble, country attitude to go with his punishing game, and seems to add new chapters to his stories of legendary strength and power every time he steps on the field.

This week, it was a page-turner in which he was named AFC Offensive Player of the Week after Hillis dragged along and plowed over the New England Patriots for a career-high 184 yards Sunday. That was the kind of performance that caused Hillis to thank the Lord, as the deeply religious player is wont to do, and shrug his shoulders.

"My dad really raised us to be tough when we were little," Hillis explained. "That style of play has always been part of my game. I never really strayed away from that. I think it's helped me out at every level I've played at."

Breaking tackles and furniture

Doug Hillis still talks about how he kept the local furniture repairman in business when his youngest son was living at home.

Peyton simply had a knack for breaking beds, doors, walls, expensive armoires and whatever else was in his path. He and his older brother, Kyle, would wrestle for fun whenever they didn't happen to be playing football or baseball outside. They would wrestle in enormous family matches on holidays. And something always ended up shattered and splintered when they were done.

"The furniture man in Conway really liked me," Doug Hillis said. "I made a living for him."

Doug Hillis admits, too, that he's partly to blame for the destruction Peyton and Kyle caused on the family furniture.

"I just always was a type that rassled with my boys all the time," he said.

He taught both his sons how to play baseball and football, even naming Peyton after legendary running back Walter Payton. They grew up on a cotton and soybean farm before moving to Conway, where Hillis' mother, Carrie, opened daycare centers. Both before and after that, every day brought a new adventure in riding horses, hunting for hogs or enduring one of Doug's toughness drills.

When Peyton was a tot, his dad would put his young son in the corner of the house and zing tennis balls in his direction -- hard. Doug Hillis swears that helped Peyton's hand-eye coordination so much that he became a standout third baseman in high school, and Kyle was good enough to play baseball in college. In another game Doug played with his sons, he would hurl a football at them as hard as he could while they tried to catch it. Each time they completed a successful catch, they would move 5 yards closer to their dad.

"There was a lot of tough love in the family," Peyton Hillis said. "If you get in a fight, just wipe your nose off and keep walking. It's not a big deal. I think it's really benefited me not only in football but in life."

By the time Peyton got to high school, he was primed to be a star in the fullback-oriented, wing-T offense.

"He likes to rough and tumble; the more physical the game, the more he thrived on that," said Smith, his high school coach.

Hillis had two favorite plays in high school -- and neither involved him carrying the ball.

The first was a sweep to the team's speedy running back, where Hillis would be the lead blocker on cornerbacks. The other was another running play where he was assigned to block linebackers.

"He would demolish them, he would blow them up," Smith said. "He wasn't showboating, but he really enjoyed it. He flew in there and blocked linebackers and blew them up."

He also managed to be good enough to rush for 2,631 yards and 29 touchdowns, and win the Landers Award given to the top high school football player in Arkansas.

And he won the Hillis family honors for most destruction to the household.

"It was a constant terror," Doug Hillis said. "He tore up more furniture than anybody I've ever seen."

Getting limited by Razorbacks' backs

No one talks about Hillis' time at the University of Arkansas much, if only because it was the time when Hillis didn't add many chapters to his legend. Hillis was a fullback for two pretty decent running backs, Darren McFadden and Felix Jones. Both are also in the NFL, and McFadden was runner-up in Heisman Trophy voting in 2006 and 2007.

Hillis, meanwhile, endured a freshman season where he suffered a broken bone in his back and a junior season where he played with a painful calcium deposit in his thigh. His sophomore season, he talked of moving to linebacker for more opportunities to play.

"It taught him how to be patient," Doug Hillis said. "It taught him to be a better person. At that time, it was killing him. He knew he could play, and he knew if given the shot, he could make the most of it. He just got covered up with the other two players. He liked them very much; it was just a fact that knowing what you can do and not being able to do it . . . it just killed him."

His limited playing time and production led to him being selected by Denver in the seventh round of the 2008 NFL Draft.

"That was the Lord's way of telling me to calm down, I guess," Hillis said. "I had a real good high school career and then I went to college and I had two really good backs in front of me. I feel like I've overcome a lot of adversity in college. A lot of people said I couldn't do stuff. I feel like I can do it and prove it to them now."

Hogs and hands and hustling

People everywhere still talk about how Peyton Hillis has been known to wrestle wild hogs. He swears that's not the case, that he only hunts wild hogs in Arkansas with his family, as he did during the Browns' bye week. But Doug Hillis explained that there's some wrestling of the 400-pound creatures involved when they're cornered against trees and you need to tie them up to transport them to another location.

"It's pretty dangerous," Doug Hillis admitted.

It takes enormous physical strength, good hands and pretty good quickness to snag the hogs.

Which, by chance, is also what Hillis uses daily with the Browns as a running back. In his first season since a trade from Denver brought him to Cleveland, the 6-1, 250-pound running back has for the first time since high school found a steady position and a coach who believes in him.

"I avoid him in the hallways," Browns coach Eric Mangini joked earlier this season. "I don't want to dislocate my shoulder."

Hillis has gone from a sometime-fullback to a full-time tailback who enjoys running through people -- or hurdling over them, if necessary -- more than he does darting around them.

"It's just the way I've always played," Hillis shrugged.

So far, Hillis has rushed for 644 yards and seven touchdowns. He's also showed versatility in catching 30 passes, including one for a touchdown.

It is, even his family admits, more than they imagined possible from their humble, hard-working son.

"I always thought Peyton could play pro football and thought he could be good at it," Doug Hillis said. "But putting up numbers like 144 against Baltimore and 184 against New England . . . that's what's blowing my mind. In Peyton's mind, he can do it all, he can do everything. Peyton has the will to do anything."

That includes playing multiple positions. He threw the ball to quarterback Colt McCoy in a trick play against New Orleans, and Hillis contends there's more arm strength where that came from.

"I wish they'd just give me a chance," Hillis sighed in mock agony. "That ain't working out, though."