First off, Bigunreal, a kudos to you, as your recent series of posts on Peyton Hillis has been outstanding, so I appreciate your insight.
I encourage everyone to check out the various articles and message boards on cleveland.com, inluding the latest one posted by Bigunreal. You'll find that there's near unanimous support for Hillis (and also Evan Moore), so the CLE fans are winning me over. They appear to be a different breed of DWF. It's probably true that this support for Hillis may be in part due to the absolutely dismal play of that bum Hardesty, but there's no denying that Hillis has connected with the fan base, just like in Denver. And it's not because he's some token White player, he's actually damn good.
So, Walrus & Schurmur have bet on the wrong horse to try and marginalize Hillis because Hardesty stinks. He cannot catch the ball, and he does not have anywhere near Hillis's overall skills as a RB. He doesn''t belong out there in a committee approach, he just needs to see maybe 20% of the overall touches/snaps, and Hillis should be the main man. I bet they are surprised at the backlash they are receiving by the fans and the media.
Of course, it also doesn't help that Schurmur has proven to be an incapable play-caller. Some of the running plays we've seen thus far are so ridiculous, that you have to almost wonder if they are designed to make Hillis fail on purpose. No running back in the league can gain any yards with that sort of play-calling, not to mention the dismal play of the offensive line.
In any event, it's too bad we have a bye week and have to wait two weeks to find out how things will play out. Anything short of Hillis getting a minimum of 20 carries and at least 5 receptions is unacceptable for the next game and going forward.