Kyle Turley sinks into the brown couch, sighs and grumbles, "Okay, let’s watch me lose it." He’s joking, sort of, only because he knows what’s coming. It’s a Tuesday night at the Southern California home of his high school wrestling coach, Dan Gurrola. Dinner topics have touched on many sides of Turley -- marriage (he’s divorced), parenthood (he’s got a daughter), art (he’s a painter), music (he’s an accomplished guitar player), religion (he’s a nonsmoking, nondrinking Mormon). Now, as Gurrola pops in a tape that reads "Jets," we’re about to see the dark side.

Suddenly it’s Week 8, 16-9 Jets, less than two minutes to go, and Turley inches forward to the edge of the couch. As Saints quarterback Aaron Brooks twists with the ball near the Jets goal line, safety Damien Robinson jumps in from behind and gives Brooks’ face mask a wicked tug. The large man wearing the Saints No. 68 jersey who lumbers into the picture looks like he should have a rock track accompanying him: "Welcome to the Jungle" or "Enter Sandman." Now Turley, pointing at the screen, takes over the play-by-play.

"I run over. I hear a crack, a snap. Aaron lets out the worst scream I’ve ever, ever heard. I'm thinking he’s going to break Aaron’s neck. Now I’m like, ‘Get off him!’ I’m stepping on Robinson’s chest, trying to get his helmet off. Look at that! It was harder to get off than I thought."

Turley explodes out of the pile with his trophy -- a Jets helmet -- and chucks it across the field, flipping it the bird to boot. "I meant to throw it straight," he says, his voice as matter-of-fact as a quarterback describing a fluffed post pattern. "My fingers got stuck in the face mask, and it came off to the left."

Laughing now, he seems just what people expect, no different on the couch than the wild man on the screen -- who, by the way, has just been ejected. The commentators’ rambling on about how Turley cost the Saints the game grates on him. "I didn’t cost us the game!" he says. "We all sucked! How about the quarterback and receivers who sucked the entire game?"

Sorry? No, not for damn near ripping Robinson’s head off, nor for his style of play, and he doesn’t give a flying helmet what you think. This is one Kyle Turley -- a shameless, boasting, 6'5", 300-pound tattooed hulk who revels in rage. It’s an image he’s sculpted, molded, built his game around. Though it traps him too, he’s not ready to give it up. Not yet. "People call me dirty," he says. "That’s a label I welcome. It’s not bad. This isn’t a clean sport. What I love about my job is kicking somebody’s butt. It makes me feel alive."

***

Maybe it’s in his blood. His grandfather, Stan Turley, used to start bar fights for fun. Turley’s father, John, spends his days busting down doors on drug raids as a deputy sheriff in Moses Lake, Wash. A coach in youth basketball, John used to put 9-year-old Kyle into games just to take out the opposing team’s big man.

Maybe it’s his desire not just to overpower an opponent, but to humiliate him, even when nothing’s at stake. His signature move is the cut block, which may be legal but doesn’t win any friends. During a preseason scrimmage in 1999, Turley got into it with Chiefs lineman Ty Parten after Parten hit him late, which came after Turley cut him. "I threw him on the ground, then I kicked the guy square in the nuts," he says. "And he’s down there screaming like a little girl!"

Or maybe it’s a sickness. "An addiction," he says. "There are days in practice where I’ll just want to get into a fight just ... because. Ever have a day like that?" He bets you have. He thinks there’s a little Turley in everyone. That’s why he considers himself lucky to have a job where the rules encourage him to act on his impulses, which are not all bad.

Turley figures those rules work for him on the field (All-Pro in 2000) and off (The Sporting News called him one of the NFL’s "Good Guys" for his charity work). An art major at San Diego State (not what you’d expect), he invites camera crews into his home to see his work. And recently, he met with representatives of Paramount Pictures to discuss starring in a Bozworthian action film.

"Kyle likes attention," says teammate and friend Jerry Fontenot. "He’s given the process some thought. It’s what he knew he’d have to do to get some coverage and attention." He’s out of control because he wants to be, as if to say, That’s the point.

But this is also someone who received 30 of 31 first-place coaches’ votes to the Pro Bowl in 2000, but not one player vote. He watched the game from home. He hoped to make it this year, too. No dice. Fact is, his peers flat-out despise the way he plays their game.

"He’ll hit you in the back," says the Patriots Bobby Hamilton. "Kick you, too." Says Titans defensive end Kevin Carter, "He’ll take out your legs, do stuff that’ll end your career. That’s why he doesn’t go to the Pro Bowl." But ask Michael Strahan, who set the NFL’s single-season sack record in 2001, who’s the best tackle he’s faced, and he doesn’t flinch: "Turley."

That’s the type of respect Turley expected from Saints coach Jim Haslett after the Jets game. Instead, Haslett, who as a Bills linebacker in 1979 kicked Terry Bradshaw’s helmetless dome, told other Saints he wanted to "kill Kyle." The coach contemplated cutting him, fined him $25,000 -- and forced him to enroll in anger management classes.(Guess how seriously Turley took that.) "I know he thought he was defending the quarterback," Haslett says, "but he went overboard. It’s not right. It hurts the football team."

"I’m never going to apologize for beating that guy’s butt," says Turley. "And I didn’t cost us the game."

As if to underscore that point, he’s capitalizing on the incident to build his rep. At this year’s Mardi Gras parade, Turley, perched on a float winding its way through the French Quarter, threw beads of little Jets helmets at the crowds. In November, at his "Kyle Turley & Friends" charity concert, he stood on stage before 400 screaming fans and raised his guitar. Between the Tur-ley! Tur-ley! chants, someone up front yelled, "Throw it!" Turley snickered to the crowd: "I must resist. I’m in anger management."

Now Turley’s in his black Benz, driving home from Gurrola’s, and something different is lurking in him. "Sometimes," he says, "I look so stupid on TV. It’s like every time I watch that replay, I say to myself, Don’t do it! Don’t throw it! I just cringe when I let it go."

What happened to the defiant dude from the living room? Not to worry. "Why do people hold this against me?" he asks. "I should have been in the Pro Bowl. Big Cat [Bears OT James Williams] is a good player, but put him there and not me? That’s absurd. Are people really that judgmental?"

What’s surprising is that he’s even asking the question. In 1994, as a San Diego State freshman, he and three other football players were arrested for battery and vandalism after ransacking a fraternity house and beating up some members. (Turley says they broke into the house because a football player had been beaten up there the night before.) They pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in exchange for having felony charges dropped. After sentencing him to 100 hours of community service, Judge Frank Brown looked at Turley and said, "Kyle, your body is a lethal weapon."

In 2000, after a 22-month marriage that produced a daughter, Haley, Turley’s wife, Kelly, filed for divorce. She also obtained a restraining order, claiming Turley had threatened to "kill the three of us, so we could be together in heaven," and that he would "be just like O.J. Simpson and I would be like Nicole Brown Simpson." As Turley rattles off his side of it -- denying the first threat, saying the second was taken out of context -- he rubs his neck and grimaces. The speedometer starts climbing: 70 ... 80 ... 85. Then, as he settles down, it drops, but only to 80.

The divorce haunts him. In the two weeks after Kelly filed, he dropped 20 pounds and painted a picture he titled "Depression." In court, Turley learned how his persona could cost him. His lawyer, whom he’s since fired, feared a judge would look at Turley and his reputation on the field and be unsympathetic. The parties settled out of court; Kelly was awarded custody of Haley. The settlement allows Kyle to see Haley three days a week, four hours per visit, during the off-season -- but only with a third party (his mother or a professional nanny) present. Turley, aware of his rep, suggested this restriction to protect himself against Kelly making any more accusations. "It would have been better if I’d been convicted of domestic violence," he says. "Then I’d at least have a reason I couldn’t see my daughter more."

Talking about his divorce -- something he’s never done publicly before -- seems to open him up. As he cruises home, he talks about trust. About pain. About depression. About friendships. He talks about his former roommate at San Diego State, Ephraim Salaam. Turley basically took care of Salaam during their junior year. He bounced checks buying groceries when Salaam was hungry. He overcharged his credit card when Salaam needed clothes.

Last year, when Turley needed help coping, Salaam was there for his friend. "Kyle falls fast," says Salaam, now a tackle with the Falcons. "He’ll go out on one date with a girl, and he’ll come back home saying, ‘She’s the one.’ Then he decides he doesn’t like her. Bottom line, his trust is messed up. Now, any girl he likes has to be screened by me."

Sometimes, offensive linemen need a pocket too.

***

Back home, in the spacious Riverside, Calif., house he’s just bought, the two Kyle Turleys are finally in sync. It’s clean, very clean for someone whose life has often been a mess. "I won’t even have a dog here," he says. "Too much fur." Since the interior decorating comes exclusively from the art major himself, it’s a fair metaphor for his life. In the living room, under his painting, is his guitar. On the desk, the book he’s currently reading, How to Succeed With Women. In the corner is the crib’s only clue he’s a football player -- a small trophy he got for being named All-Pro.

Turley doesn’t feel trapped here. For a moment, he isn’t playing the fresh-hell-in-cleats role he trots out every Sunday. No tough talk about his marriage. No cussing at the world. No boasting about punting someone square in the groin. "When the pool’s done," he says, "all I want to do is sit out there and play guitar."

The two Kyle Turleys will always have their differences. For every time he promotes himself as a multimedia Butkus for the new century, the other part he wants people to see -- the artist and guitar player and loving father -- recedes a little. And it marks him. You wonder how long he can keep it up.

It’s not a question he wants to deal with, not right now: "Am I going to change? No. I know I got a bit of a temper. I balance it now through football, but when I retire? I’ll have surfing, guitar, art." Will that be enough? "Dunno," he jokes, sort of. "I already told our security guy, ‘When I’m done, just let me know who you want me to mess up for you.’"

As he guides you through his bedroom and game room and computer room, Turley turns a corner into his favorite room. Big couch. Big TV. And that’s about it. This is his favorite space? Where’s the wall dedicated to Slayer? The showcase stocked with old jerseys? How about a bronze-dipped Jets helmet?

"Don’t have ’em."

Why?

"Because," he says as he stares out the window, "it’s just what people would expect."

This article appears in the March 4 issue of ESPN The Magazine.