The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH - Tommy Maddox went from a football game to an X-ray table, with a doctor hovering above him and asking the quarterback to squeeze his hand.

Dazed, confused, not knowing why he still wasn't playing the game or what had happened, the Steelers quarterback instinctively squeezed back.

"I heard them saying, `All right, we've got something going' - and that's when I got scared," Maddox said. "I realized I still wasn't moving my legs, and that was the tough part."

He doesn't remember his face mask being cut off, both teams praying for him or ride in the ambulance - until waking up in Nashville's Baptist Hospital and realizing he couldn't move anything.

"That's when it started bothering me a little bit," he said. "It's hard. You think about your kids, your wife ... I just thank God it's worked out the way it worked out."

Wednesday, Maddox became a football player again. He rode an exercise bike, hugged his Steelers teammates, tossed a football casually, attended the daily quarterbacks meeting and began plowing through a stack of 1,000 e-mails sent him by relieved and appreciative fans.

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