The year Bryan Bulaga wanted to quit football, he felt like a glorified tackling dummy.

He was a seventh-grader on the eighth-grade Sunday league Raiders and, for the only time in football-playing career, he sat the bench. Occasionally he would play, one time even at fullback, but for the most part he was his teammate's punching bag, stuck on a team without his classmates.

“I got beat to hell every week,” Bulaga said. “Every day of practice, the guys are 20 pounds bigger and they’re all faster."

But instead of quitting, Bulaga vowed to not let it happen again.

“It lit a little bit of a fire underneath him,” said Joe Kielbasa, Bulaga’s coach that year.

[ Photo gallery: Bryan Bulaga grows up playing sports ]

From the time he was 3 months old, Bulaga's size was off the chart for his age, from being a striper who wasn’t allowed to play outside the tackles many weeks in Raiders football to Marian Central, where teammate Jack Gilleland says the defense took a photo together and Bulaga was tallest by almost a head.

“I always laugh because you see all the big guys on (the Packers’) O-line, you look at them in the huddle and he's still the biggest one,” Gilleland said.

He always wanted to push his limits, one time jumping out of a swing at its peak and landing in the hospital with a head injury instead. In first grade, he broke his arm in an attempt to jump off his neighbors' Little Tikes playhouse and over a pool.

Bulaga was a happy-go-lucky, sports-obsessed kid on the field and quiet off it, until you really got to know him. On the field, he demanded attention starting with his first varsity game as a sophomore playoff callup.

Harvard fullback Dan Haeflinger, eventually the Northwest Herald Player of the Year and a state wrestling champ, had been running through the Marian Central defense, so Marian coach Ed Brucker sent in Bulaga at outside linebacker.

As Haeflinger took the handoff on another fullback dive, Bulaga met him with a loud crack and stuffed him in the backfield, something Harvard coach Tim Haak later said he had never seen happen before.

The next game, Bulaga jumped a tight end's route over the middle to intercept a pass and return it for the game-winning score against Byron.

[ Photo gallery: Bryan Bulaga at Marian Central ]

That day, Northern Illinois coach Joe Novak was the first college coach to take notice. Bulaga soon began to realize football was his future. After some convincing from his father, he gave up basketball after playing his freshman. And, after breaking his wrist on a play at first base in baseball in the spring of his sophomore year, he gave up that sport, too.

Bulaga was big, now he needed to get faster, so he found Davis, where he worked five days a week. He impressed Davis with his ability to comprehend and then retain the teaching, but he also kept growing, shooting up taller than Bill, who said he had to "stop messing with him."

A year later, when Davis sent scouts Bulaga’s times in the three-cone L drill, he got a return call of disbelief. Bulaga, then a tight end, was running times closer to a running back.

“The way he would be moving at 280-285 pounds, and his footwork, it was incredible,” Davis said.

As a junior, Bulaga's stock rose the most, leading to 19 scholarship offers.

His first offer came from Michigan State and then Purdue, when a picture of Bulaga watching the game began circulating and big-name schools such as Oklahoma and Nebraska began calling.

Everyone wanted Bulaga at different spots, but Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz was determined to make him an offensive tackle, filling out his huge frame. So that offseason, Bulaga went to work with a new sense of purpose.

He had already played outside linebacker, middle linebacker, tight end and defensive end. Now, he would become an offensive tackle.

“In the 24 years I was at Marian Central, he was the best athlete I ever coached,” former Marian football assistant Terry Stanger said. “When he wants something, you will not prevent him from having it.”

Bulaga went to McHenry East grad Jace Sayler, who picked up a Super Bowl ring himself with the New England Patriots, to work on offensive tackle technique.

“The thing that amazed me so much,” Sayler said, “was the kid's ability to move his feet and his athletic ability at that size.

“He was my size in my junior year in college (at Michigan State). The most incredible thing about it was … his times weren't that far from mine, too. He was just so far ahead of the game athletically.”

In March, Bulaga committed to Iowa. And, despite the efforts of plenty of schools to change his mind, he didn't budge.

“I think his heart was set on Iowa, but he had some very cool schools come after him, like Oklahoma and Nebraska, schools that would be hard to say no to,” said Kathi Bulaga, who works at Crystal Lake’s Glacier Ridge Elementary. “Bryan is the kind of guy, he made a commitment to Coach Ferentz and to Iowa. And these schools were very persuasive, and I think it was hard for him.”

When Bulaga came back for his senior year, he was bigger and better than ever. And so were his teammates, all 23 of them who made a run to the Class 5A state final at the University of Illinois in Champaign, where they lost to Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin.

While that state title loss still stings, Kusek – a starting safety for the Hurricanes – said no one on that team left with regrets.

“Bryan knew that he had a career after high school,” Kusek said. “In a lot of situations that you see and learn about, when a guy thinks he has that opportunity, he tones it down. Bryan was not that guy. He gave everything all the time.”

[ Read Part III on Bryan Bulaga's loyalty to his friends, coaches and family in McHenry County ]