The Hillis Conspiracy rolls on. From the moment the story broke about his "strep throat," I knew something wasn't right. No NFL player misses a game because of something like that, especially a warrior like Hillis. Since that time, Hillis has clearly played second fiddle to a vastly inferior back in Hardesty. It doesn't seem to matter how bad Hardesty looks, Shurmur contines to prefer him. Hillis has perhaps the best hands of any RB in the league, but Shurmur wants to use Hardesty-who has dropped at least SIX passes the past two games-in that role. What kind of sane coach does that? Finally, the past few games, this idiotic clown has installed Hardesty as the GOAL LINE back! Insanity! I don't believe for a second that Hillis has any "hamstring" injury. If you watched last week's game, you could see him standing on the sidelines, clearly unhappy about the situation. I didn't see it, but several posters on Cleveland Browns' forums claimed to have seen him attempting to lobby the coaches to play, and they merely waved him off in disgust. Whatever is really going on in Cleveland, one thing is certain- Shurmur sees Hillis as a fullback. White RBs tend to look that way to almost all coaches in this absurd league. He doesn't care about talent, past track record, 40 times, receiving ability or anything else. All he knows is that Hillis is white, and NFL RBs aren't white. A couple scenarios come to mind, in determining what really happened here. Perhaps Hillis was told the Friday before the "strep throat" game (when we first heard he was "sick") that his role was going to be gradually diminished in favor of Hardesty. Hillis naturally objected strongly to this, and when he showed up for the game, they told him he was only going to play fullback. He could have either walked off in frustration, or maybe they told he to go home and then concocted the ridiculous cover story, which of course only made Hillis look foolish. The entire thing made Hillis seem to be "soft," uncaring about his teammates, etc. Certainly his contract situation is a big part of the problem here, but it isn't the primary issue at hand. We're all avoiding it, much as the msm would never acknowledge it. If Hillis ends up getting screwed out of being permitted to be the ONLY starting white RB in the NFL, then a lot more people are going to finally discover the gigantic elephant wandering around the room. I knew something would probably happen to Hillis, but this entire drama is ridiculous.