Miyan Williams remembers the first time he ran the ball.

It was in a youth league in Butler County when he replaced his team’s running back who was out sick.

The carry resulted in a touchdown as Williams bulldozed through the defense. As the story goes, he trampled four tacklers on his path to the end zone.

“Then they kept giving me the ball,” Williams said, “and I kept running people over.”

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The journey of Williams from a kid in Cincinnati to Ohio State, where he forms a potent backfield duo with TreVeyon Henderson, is rooted in that early display of toughness.

Though only a 5-foot-9 back, he is a powerful runner who bounces off defenders like a pinball.

Nicknamed “Pork Chop,” he complements Henderson with a physical running style. Through the first month of this season, he has gained nearly two-thirds of his 308 rushing yards after contact.

“He does a great job of accelerating into contact, and that’s not natural,” Ohio State running backs coach Tony Alford said. “It's like driving a car where contact’s going to be made with another car. Usually you hit the brake to slow down. He speeds up. He’s a violent player.”

It adds another element to one of the nation’s highest-scoring offenses.

For as much as the Buckeyes have built their reputation on a prolific passing game led by a Heisman Trophy front-runner, their success is also increasingly found through a hard-nosed runner and his underdog story.

Miyan Williams was an 'angry little guy'

The question was innocent.

Not long after she signed up her son for football at 8 years old, Millie Ray asked him why he was enjoying the sport. She presumed it was because he had found early success.

But Williams, who also played on the offensive line and at linebacker at an early age, gave another reason.

“I get to hit people my hardest,” he said.

More than a decade later, the response draws laughs from Ray.

“He’s been loving it ever since,” she said.

Ray at first saw football as an outlet for Williams, who had a quick temper that got him into scrapes with other boys at school or in their neighborhood.

“It wouldn’t be like bullying me,” Williams said, “but they would just say something, and I wouldn’t like it, and I’d fight them.”

He soon learned to channel those feelings on the field.

“I could take my anger out on somebody and not actually hurt them,” he said.

The attitude helped make him an effective running back, influencing the way he learned to carry the ball.

“He was an angry little guy,” said Bartley Thomas, an influential youth coach. “He was always sweet, but he just ran angry. He was like a little spitfire.”

Thomas remembers instances of Williams moving piles of defenders. His legs kept churning. As he learned to fight for yards, Williams also looked up to NFL running backs such as Marshawn Lynch who could grind defenses.

His approach evolved as he grew older.

Williams learned to become more balanced as a runner rather than barrel through every defender in his way.

“He just matured," Thomas said. “He started seeing little things like, "OK, I don't have to run over this guy. I can stick my foot in the dirt, and I can get up the field, but I can still hit that hole angry.’ ”

Miyan Williams was a 'hard shell to crack'

It was during Williams’ freshman season at Winton Woods High School in 2016 when he realized his potential in football. In a win over Elder at the famed Pit, he ran for 148 yards and a touchdown as the visiting Warriors fans chanted, “He’s a freshman!”

“The atmosphere was crazy,” Williams said. “It felt like a college game.”

When he met with his mom afterward, he told her he thought he could get to the next level.

Looking back on his breakout rushing performance, he calls it eye-opening.

“At first I was playing football to stay active, stay out of trouble and keep myself busy,” Williams said, “but I was like, ‘I got to take this seriously, because I can go somewhere with it.’ ”

Williams spent more time after practices running to increase his stamina. For improved cutting, he laid out cones on the turf to go through agility drills. Scholarship offers arrived at his doorstep before his sophomore season. Kentucky was the first one, followed by Big Ten schools, and others from major conferences.

He committed to Iowa State in the summer before his senior season. The Cyclones’ star running back at the time was David Montgomery, who also grew up in Cincinnati.

The Buckeyes were late to offer him, targeting more highly ranked backs in the recruiting cycle, a group that included Bijan Robinson, before they all went elsewhere. Though Williams rushed for nearly 6,000 yards over his high school career, he was a three-star recruit.

A turning point came when his mother called Alford to press for answers and make the case for her son.

“She was like being his agent,” Alford said, “and I’m like, ‘Yes ma’am, I got it.’ ”

Part of the slow-moving recruitment stemmed from Williams’ reserved nature. A quiet teenager, he wasn’t one for much texting or long phone calls.

As a result, it took Alford a longer time to build a relationship with him.

“He was a very hard shell to crack,” Alford said.

Connection matters to Alford. The long hours in meetings, practices and games add up, and he wants the personalities of his running backs to mesh.

As conversations with Williams picked up at last in the fall of 2019, Ohio State offered him a scholarship. By late November, he flipped his commitment to the blue-blood school less than a two-hour drive from home.

When Williams revealed his decision to the staff before their final home game against Penn State, they cheered, and he watched coach Ryan Day leap in the air.

“Let’s do it,” Day told him.

They saw the potential of a power back. In a team period in one of Williams’ earliest practices as a freshman in 2020, he dropped a linebacker.

“It energized the entire practice,” Alford said.

The Buckeyes have sought to foster the hard-nosed running over the past year. After last season, Day and Alford met with Williams to encourage him to become a more north-south runner this fall. They noticed he was too eager as a second-year freshman to bounce carries outside, looking to break off a big run, rather than running downhill.

“Just play your game,” Alford said. “Use the tools that make you such a dynamic player and that might be that you run through someone’s face.”

Once overlooked by his in-state school, he is now an integral piece.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Alford said.

Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Contact him at jkaufman@dispatch.com or on Twitter @joeyrkaufman

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Miyan Williams road from Cincinnati to Ohio State football