Hoppel hoping Browns like him

BEREA — It’s a dream wrapped in a nightmare, circling back to a dream for few.

Adam Hoppel sits awake in the Browns hotel, studying the defensive playbook, wondering how long he can keep it.

Coming off his first preseason game at Green Bay, Hoppel sounded fairly hopeful.

“I think I have a chance to make the roster or the practice squad,” he said. “I’ll just keep working hard every day, and I’m sure things will work out.”

The next day, the defensive line coach got all over the 24-year-old rookie from Beaver Local High School.

“It’ll be a short trip for you if you don’t change,” Bryan Cox told Hoppel during a heavy-bags drill.

Moments later, Cox was on Hoppel again: “Quit doing it your way and start doing it my way.”

Later, in a more subtle stinger, Cox corrected Hoppel’s technique: “Off the wrong hip.”

It’s enough to make a young man scream, which Louis Leonard, who has a good deal more experience than Hoppel, basically did Thursday.

During drills in sultry heat, Leonard made the mistake of engaging Cox in a shouting match. Cox, who played 12 years in the NFL, ended the scrape by telling Leonard to start running laps — and not to finish until he told him to.

Imagine how a rookie standing a few feet from this exchange might feel.

Hoppel admits the obvious, that this is more than he ever had to fight off at Beaver Local or the University of Cincinnati.

“In college, you wanted to do well, but it wasn’t so critical that every little thing needed to be perfect,” he said. “There, you could mess up, get yelled at, and it would be over.

“Here, you mess up, and you could be out the next day.”

Hoppelis the youngest, shortest, most inexperienced defensive lineman on the roster.

He’s part of a crowd that includes ex-Jets Kenyon Coleman and C.J. Mosley; veteran starters Shaun Rogers, Robaire Smith and Corey Williams; and young backups Santonio Thomas, Ahtyba Rubin, Louis Leonard and Melila Purcell.

That’s a lot of candidates on a team using a three-man front. What can Hoppel hang his helmet on?

He was a top player on maybe the best Cincinnati team ever. He handled himself well against Louisville center Eric Wood, a first-round pick in April.

Hoppel’s best days as a defensive lineman arguably are ahead of him.

“My first couple years at Cincinnati didn’t go real well,” Hoppel said. “I was recruited out of high school mostly as a fullback.

“After I moved back to defensive line, things went well.”

At maybe 6-foot-1, he’ll have to impress the Browns that he can maybe develop into a Kelly Gregg, a 6-footer who’s had a nice career with the Ravens.

Hoppel’s strengths are hand and foot quickness and experience in hand-to-hand combat. At Beaver Local, he was an Ohio wrestling champion in 2002 and a state runner-up in 2003.

His wrestling instincts apply to his quest for an NFL job.

“It’s all about leverage and using your hips to gain leverage on your opponent,” he said.

Thursday’s practice was a grinder, partly because camp is getting old, partly because of the heat. Hoppel didn’t get yelled at much Thursday. It was Leonard’s turn.

The tension builds for all of the guys on the bubble. All of them know their job security is tied to how they look against the Lions on Saturday night.

Hoppel has been in football training camps before, but ...

“In college,” he said, “we used to go away to the middle of the woods. It was a church camp in Indiana.

“It’s kind of the same ... just a lot more pressure here than there was in college.”