HOOVER, Ala. -- Patrick Willis walked into the room, and sat down, and everyone wanted to know if it was hard.

Willis shook his head.

Maybe it depends on the your definition of hard.

Willis has seen hard. Hard is growing up without your mother, because she didn't care enough to be around. Hard is being taken from your father and put in a foster home.

Coming to a media day and talking about your drowned brother is not hard.

Hard is what Willis did at the funeral service last Saturday afternoon.

The crowd filled the chapel and spilled out onto the streets. When the service ended, they let the people who couldn't get in walk past the casket to pay their respects.

That took a full hour.

"It was packed," said Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron, "and very emotional."

Detris Willis, 17, a rising senior at Bruceton Central High School, had drowned the previous Monday in an old quarry they call Blue Hole.

The initial reports said he'd been swimming for hours, but that's not exactly right. Detris swam out with some buddies to a spit of land where they joked and laughed and spent the afternoon. When they decided to swim back, Detris disappeared.

Six days later, his brother Patrick walked to the front of the chapel and looked out at the throng and delivered a eulogy.

"I just got up there and talked about how I kept him in my heart whenever I played," Willis said.

He talked for a good long while. He said nobody is promised tomorrow, and isn't this proof, and the important thing is making use of the days you have.

He finished. He went to the cemetery. He watched mourners place single white roses in his brother's grave.

Hard?

That's hard. Not some crazy media deal.

"Patrick was unbelievable," said Chris Finley, his foster dad. "He's got some out-of-this-world faith to do what he did. It's getting so nothing he does surprises me anymore.

"That man's a rock."

He is the best linebacker in college football and the best story in college football and how can it get any better than that?

He is Peyton Manning, without the pedigree. He is DeAngelo Williams, without the miniature car.

He is an irresistible defender and an unapologetic role model and the one player you should point out to your kids this coming season.

What's that?

You think you have it bad?

Let me tell you about Patrick Willis ...

His mother up and walked out on them, on Patrick and Orey and Ernica and Detris.

"He never felt sorry for himself," said Finley, and can you imagine that?

But, hey, at least he had his father, Ernest. He could raise the kids.

Until the Department of Children's Services decided Ernest wasn't a fit father, either. Then he didn't have that.

Willis was at a baseball game when they came for the children. At first, Chris Finley and his wife, Julie, tried to raise all four.

"We had only been married for two years," Finley said. "We didn't have any children of our own. To go from that to four teenagers in the house was too much."

Patrick and Orey stayed on with the Finleys. Ernica and Detris were placed with another family.

"It was a rough day when I told them," Finley said. "You can understand it. It's hard being broken up."

At which point, the Willis children could have been excused for screwing up the rest of their lives. They had gotten a raw deal. People would understand.

"That's not Patrick," Finley said. "Somewhere, his father or someone must have done something right. The kid has an unbelievable will to overcome anything that's put in front of him."

Willis became Mr. Football in high school. When the University of Tennessee didn't show any interest in him, he accepted a scholarship to Ole Miss and turned himself into the league's most compelling defensive force.

The guy averaged nearly 13 tackles a game last year, eight of them solo. He played with a broken finger, a sprained left knee, a sprained foot and a separated shoulder.

As he pinballed around the field, a club on his hand, it was hard to fathom what drove him so.

"My family," he said. "I carry them on the field with me every play."

Willis was the oldest, see. He wanted to show the others that it was possible.

If he succeeded, they'd understand they could succeed.

"I've heard him say that a hundred times," Finley said.

Back in Bruceton, Detris struggled anyway. He bounced from the foster home to a group home to one of those wilderness camps. Two years ago, he sauntered into the office of Tim Gilmer, the high school coach, and announced that he'd be all-state.

"I don't doubt it," Gilmer said. "But first, let's see what kind of person you can be."

The state placed Detris in another foster home. A couple months later, he approached Gilmer after practice.

"Something happened last night that I've been waiting for a long time," he said.

"What's that?" said Gilmer.

"My foster father told me he loved me."

Maybe that's where it turned. Or maybe Detris just grew up. But as he headed into his senior season at Bruceton, Detris had molded himself into a leader and a good kid.

"When you have that many people pulling for you, and then you turn it around, there's just a special connection there," Gilmer said.

He'd turned out just like his big brother. That's what everyone said. A prankster, sure, but that's his brother, too.

Ask Orgeron, who might never recover from the meeting he had with Willis at the end of last year. It was a cold December day, following the long season of losses, and Willis had been pondering whether to turn pro.

"I've talked to my family," Willis told the coach, "and I've decided it would be best if I leave school."

Orgeron listened, stunned.

"Why?" he finally said.

"I just think it's best for me and my family," Willis said.

Orgeron, wobbling, wished his star player the best. Willis got up, walked out of the room and let the door close before he merrily popped his head back in.

"C'mon Coach!" he said, "I thought you had more faith in me than that!"

So it was that Willis was driving to offseason agility drills last Monday, when his cell phone rang. A police scanner said Detris had drowned at the quarry. It wasn't confirmed. They'd let him know.

"My brother called me back and said, 'It's true, they found his body,'" Willis said. "He was getting ready to start football practices the same day."

The rest was a gray blur of arrangements and grief and wondering why.

The kid had overcome so much. And now this?

"It's rocked us pretty bad," said Gilmer, the high school football coach. "It didn't make sense."

Which is where the big brother stepped in, because that's what big brother's do.

He didn't have to give a eulogy. Everyone told him that.

But he wanted to say something to all the friends and families, to say what he believed.

Days are a treasure. Don't let anyone put you down or stop you. Get right with yourself and the Lord.

"Basically," said Gilmer, "he used it as a time to give a message to our youth."

And then he had a message just for his brother, who was listening from somewhere, of that Willis is sure.

"You didn't get the chance to do all the things I've done," he said, "but you're a part of everything I do."