AMERICA AT LARGE: Just three days ago people were wondering whether Tommy Maddox would ever walk again. Now they're asking when he's going to play again. If the Pittsburgh quarterback's 2002 season didn't qualify as a miracle already, it certainly does now.

When the NFL season hit its midway point a couple of weeks back, pretty much every football expert in the land agreed the rejuvenated Maddox was the leader in the clubhouse for Comeback Player of the Year. Out of football for three years and a decade removed from his last NFL starting assignment, the 32-year-old Maddox was probably on his way to a Pro Bowl berth until an on-field collision resulted in his being carried off on a gurney, apparently paralysed, last Sunday.

A dozen years have passed since Maddox opted to leave UCLA and make himself eligible for the NFL draft, and in the intervening years his unhappy experience had served as a cautionary tale for other young players tempted to prematurely leap from the college ranks. His optimism seemed initially to have been rewarded when the Denver Broncos picked him in the first round of the 1992 draft. Coach Dan Reeves viewed the quarterback as a long-term project who could be groomed while John Elway was completing his Hall of Fame-bound career.

Elway was injured in Maddox's rookie year. The 20-year-old Maddox started four games in his stead, and lost them all. Two years later, Reeves was gone and Maddox was traded to the then-Los Angeles Rams, where he barely played at all.

Reeves, who had resurfaced in New York, managed to acquire Maddox the following year in an ill-fated deal that would hasten the departure of both coach and player from the Giants. In one of his New York games, Maddox managed the near-impossible by compiling a 0.0 passer rating for an entire half of a game against the Eagles. The Giants released him in 1996, and when the Atlanta Falcons also showed him the door in 1997, his NFL career appeared to have run its course.

Maddox went to work as an insurance salesman, following in his father's footsteps. "I think I was decent at it," he recalled, "but it wasn't something I loved doing. I think that was what prompted me to get out of it and try to do something else." "Something else" involved the backwaters of professional football. He spent 2000 playing indoor ball for the New Jersey Red Dogs of the Arena League, and then for the Los Angeles Xtreme of World Wrestling Federation founder Vince McMahon's better-forgotten XFL.

Although his team won the XFL championship and he was named its Most Valuable Player, when the league folded and Maddox sent faxes to every NFL team, only the Steelers so much as invited him to work out. Signed to a contract with Pittsburgh, Maddox spent last season serving as Kordell Stewart's back-up, and opened the current campaign in the same role.

THE Steelers lost their first two games this Fall, and with Stewart struggling in the third, coach Bill Cowher rolled the dice and summoned Maddox, who promptly engineered a come-from-behind overtime victory over the Browns. With Maddox at the reins, the Steelers went 5-1-1 in their next seven games. He threw for 473 yards and four touchdowns in a tie against the Falcons a few weeks ago, and was the NFL's fourth-highest rated passer going into last weekend's game against the Titans in Nashville.

On the last play of the third period Sunday afternoon, Maddox scrambled as he attempted to unload a pass. Just as he got the ball away he was hit from behind by Titans' linebacker Keith Bullock. The hit was not particularly vicious, but Bullock did land a solid forearm shiver to Maddox's shoulder, forcing the quarterback's head to swivel just as his helmet ploughed into the ground.

Maddox went down in a heap and didn't get up. For 17 terrifying minutes he lay motionless on the ground, by which time every telecast in America had turned to the riveting scene. Although Maddox regained consciousness within five minutes and never stopped breathing, he was motionless apart from his blinking eyelids. He was strapped onto a backboard, his neck stabilised, and carried from the field. Reports trickled back that he had lost all feeling in his extremities.

Players from both sides knelt in prayer before the game resumed. Everyone, with good reason, feared for the worst.

"We were very concerned about a cervical spine fracture," admitted Steelers trainer John Norwig.

Maddox' Pittsburgh team-mates could hardly be blamed if their hearts weren't exactly in the game. The Steelers went on to lose 31-23, but shortly after it ended reports began to filter back that Maddox had regained some feeling in his fingers and toes.

The prayers must have worked.

Maddox doubtless benefited from a massive steroid injection he received in the ambulance on the way to Nashville's Baptist Hospital. By evening he was able to move his arms and legs, and by Monday he was walking on his own and improved enough to be transported to a hospital in Pittsburgh, presumably with a detour via Lourdes.

The injury was diagnosed as a "spinal cord concussion," and by Tuesday night he had been pronounced "fully recovered" and walked out of the hospital. Overcoming the psychic trauma of the experience, on the other hand, may take some doing. The Steelers have placed no timetable on his return, and Stewart will start this weekend.

"There certainly is a psychological effect," said Dr Joseph Maroon, the neurosurgeon who treated Maddox. "When you're lying on a football field, unable to feel your arms or legs and unable to move, I can't imagine a more frightening experience. I've seen this in quite a few athletes, and they haven't returned to function. What he's been through is quite a shock."

"He's feeling much better except for a headache," reported Steelers' team physician Dr Anthony Yates. "He told his father he's not going to give him any more strokes on the golf course." "He is perfectly normal," marvelled Dr Maroon after Maddox passed a battery of neurological tests with flying colours. "Everything is absolutely, perfectly normal." Asked whether Maddox was aware how fortunate he was the injury wasn't more severe than it was, Maroon smiled. "He knows very well he was," said the doctor.