Steve McNair is sitting in the Titans lunch room picking through a toasted turkey sandwich. Around him on the walls are pictures and portraits of former and current Titans/Oilers, including giant, kitschy oil paintings of the team's all-time greats. While admiring the almost paint-by-numbers quality of the portraits I notice that McNair is sitting exactly between his own life-sized rendering and that of legendary quarterback Warren Moon.

Halfway between himself and a legend.

	If McNair can walk, he's playing.

Indeed, that may be where McNair started this season but if he wins this weekend -- and singlehandedly carries his team back to the Super Bowl just three years after coming up 36 inches short against the Rams -- then he should start eating his lunch underneath, or right next to, Moon. And the Titans should start feeding him filet and lobster.

"It's funny how now everyone wants to talk about all these young explosive guys playing quarterback," says Titans TE Frank Wycheck. "When Steve's been doing this for a long time. Those guys are all trying to become what Steve McNair already is."

Of course, when you mention all this to McNair he says almost nothing. He barely responds. He never does.

This is a guy who finished third in the league MVP balloting, and responded with a shoot-I'm-just-glad-I-didn't-finish-last shrug of his shoulders. When the Titans started the season 1-4 head coach Jeff Fisher literally put the team and the season in McNair's (gigantic, catcher's mitt-sized) hands. And the QB responded with 12 wins and career bests in yards (3,389), completions (301) and TDs (22).

Then, after all that, when he was snubbed by the Pro Bowl, he said nothing.

"Highway robbery," said team prez Jeff Diamond.

"A travesty," said Wycheck.

"Absurd. Our team doesn't care about the Pro Bowl anymore," said LB Keith Bulluck.

"Could you please pass the mayo?" said McNair.

Although he was the most prolific quarterback in NCAA history while at Alcorn State, when the Titans sat McNair behind Chris Chandler for his first two seasons in the NFL, he never said a word. Never spoke up. When the team wasted his talents the next several seasons by running an offense so conservative Woody Hayes would have begged to open things up a bit, McNair said nothing. Not a peep.

Oh, he'll talk. In fact, he's a very candid, friendly and brutally honest interview. He loves to recollect about his beautiful ranch in Mississippi -- on the highest point of the property McNair can do a complete panorama and know that he owns everything he can see -- and he likes his neighbor down there, a kindred country spirit, some guy who throws the ball around for the Green Bay Packers.

And, uh, trust me, he's not afraid to show a little emotion. In fact, he practically hissed at me in anger when I suggested that, at some point during the era of the Me First Athlete, he should have spoken up, or gone behind Fisher's back, or even thrown a Terrell-ble Tantrum.

"Okay, yes, being a competitor and doing the things I did in college, I wanted to throw the ball," he finally relents. "That's why this team drafted me. But my job, first, is to run the offense they put in front of me, not moan and groan. I was patient enough to wait my turn, and now it's here and I'm taking advantage of it.

"I've been ready, it's just that we were a three yards and a cloud of dust team. It took the right situation, with our backs against the wall, to expand this offense and bring out my best."

We all talk a mighty good game, don't we?

We say we want our superstars to be good citizens. We want them to be maniacs on the field, and be humble, polite gentlemen off it. We want them to subjugate themselves for the good of the team. We want them to stay out of trouble and hand the ball off to the ref after scoring a game-winning TD, then praise their teammates and their country before going to visit sick kids in the hospital. We say that's what we want, right?

Then along comes McNair, a guy who does all that, and we push him aside to crane our necks at- -- and bend over backwards to excuse and explain away the behavior of -- the league's high profile jerks.

In the meantime, McNair plays through the excruciating pain of injuries to his head, shoulder, back, ribs, thumb and toe (I could go on, although I'm not sure how McNair does) and what do we do? We turn around and vote him 10th in Pro Bowl balloting.

"Steve's success on Sundays without practicing only further suggests how far he's come at the position," says Fisher, working that nasty beard of his. "If someone was going to discuss our identity, we'd hope they'd say we play tough, we play hard, we play smart, we play physical and we will outplay you regardless of our physical well-being. And in many ways, Steve exemplifies that for us."

	This is the man you want come crunch time.

And all the time, McNair says nothing. He never complains. It just isn't in him. And thank goodness for that.

You see, he and his four brothers were raised in the tiny dust-up of Mount Olive, Miss., by a single mom who held down two jobs. And any fellow latch-key kid with older brothers knows that McNair's preternatural toughness, his high threshold for pain and his inability to whine comes from a youth spent getting pounded on by his siblings.

I guess one learns to work through little aches or the sniffles without complaint when not finishing your chores means you might not eat the next day. If Lucille McNair got home at night and found that homework or chores were not done, it was not unusual for her to shake someone out of bed to finish the job.

McNair has simply extended those lessons, and the soft-spoken love and loyalty he feels for his brothers, to the game of football. "These teammates believe in me," he says. "When you hear them say they will go only as far as I can take them, something goes through you that's more powerful than any [painkiller]. That's what keeps me going, that's what makes all the pain go away. That's what I really care about."

Teammates over TV time?

Completions over Q rating?

Winning over whining?

Trophies over talking?

What a concept.

If anyone can make it work in this league, it's Steve McNair.

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at FlemFile@carolina.rr.com.