The four-hour pregame warmup begins with that nasty big toe on Steve McNair's right foot. The ligaments are so mangled from multiple sprains that he's already had one surgery on it, and he'll need another after the season. First the trainers wrap the toe in nearly a whole roll of athletic tape to keep it stable. Next they cut a silver-dollar-size hole in the top of his shoe just so he can fit his cleats over the taped and swollen digit. Now he's ready to apply heat to his strained rib muscles, dented sternum and surgically repaired back -- a necessity if he hopes to stand up straight and raise his hands above his head. After all this, he still has to be careful not to sit in the same position for more than 15 minutes, or his back will lock up. Next he loosens up his throwing shoulder, which before the 2001 season needed 15 gallons of saline solution to wash away an infection, with 20 minutes of electrical stimulation.

	McNair may be broken down, but his game isn't.

Finally, before the pain-numbing needle is plunged into his backside and trainers mummify him in more tape -- "Everything is covered except his head," says teammate Derrick Mason -- McNair finds a quiet spot in the locker room for a nice hour-long nap. Honest. Preseason game or Super Bowl, it doesn't matter. When the Titans started this season 1-4, he napped before every game. And as Tennessee quietly surfed a 10-1 tsunami of momentum into the postseason to become the AFC's unlikely No. 2 seed, McNair snoozed like a baby. Before every game. McNair may be hurting, but at least he's well-rested.

Now's the time of year, though, when the real pain kicks in. Every time he drifts off, his mind slides back to the same damn nightmare: Super Bowl XXXIV ... January 2000 ... Atlanta ... time running out ... and wideout Kevin Dyson on his back stretching, the ball still a yard away from the end zone. A freakin' party-sub sandwich short of a world championship.

"The back pain, the rib pain, even the toe pain might go away someday," says the 29-year-old McNair, who missed more practices than Donovan McNabb, but not a single start. "The pain from that game will always be there. To come that far and end up a yard short? But I actually enjoy that pain. That's what gives me the fire inside to get up and keep going."

After that 23-16 loss to the Rams, McNair and his coach, Jeff Fisher, shared a long embrace, punctuating a watershed moment in the quarterback's career. McNair didn't just take over the game on that last drive. He became the Titans' emotional leader. In 2001, with Tennessee's dominant defense crippled by injuries and its All-Pro running back, Eddie George, slowed by chronic turf toe, Fisher and offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger made McNair the go-to guy on the field as well.

What took so long? Six years before, in 1995, he'd been the third pick overall in the draft. But what had made him great at Division I-AA Alcorn State, where he became the only quarterback in NCAA history to accumulate more than 16,000 yards in offense (14,496 passing, 2,327 rushing), made him rattle his coaches in the NFL.

"It was really bad for me at first because people hated a running quarterback," says McNair, one of only five quarterbacks in NFL history to throw for 19,000 yards and rush for another 3,000. "When I took off running, people would scream, 'Oh, he doesn't know what he's doing!' Now -- shoot -- a running quarterback like Vick or McNabb? Those guys stand next to God."

During his first two seasons, McNair watched in disbelief as journeyman Chris Chandler ran the offense. And when he finally took over in 1997, he couldn't help himself: He jumped out of the pocket at the first sign of pressure from the defense. Sure, he was fun to watch, but he didn't endear himself to Fisher and offensive coordinator Les Steckel, who were looking to see if he could actually read a defense.

Then came that Super Bowl, and Fisher had his epiphany. Steckel and his conservative philosophy left Tennessee for Tampa Bay. And Heimerdinger, who had coached the Broncos' wide receivers during John Elway's Super Bowl years, brought along a stack of new plays he'd designed for McNair. The consensus from the Steckel holdovers on the staff? Uh, Dinger, he can't do that. "My idea was, let's give it to him and see for ourselves if he can or he can't," says Heimerdinger. "Since then he's done everything I've given him -- and then some."

McNair finished 2001 as the second-highest-rated passer (90.2) in the AFC, and followed that up this season with career bests in yards (3,389), completions (301) and touchdowns passes (22). Although he was snubbed by Pro Bowl voters, he did finish third in the MVP voting, and since 1999 he has the best winning percentage of any quarterback with at least 50 starts. And he's got the hurt to show for it.

"With the physical mind-set I play the game with, I expect to get hurt," says the 6'2'', 229-pound McNair, who's gotten used to visiting kids in the hospital and having them ask how he's doing. "So the sense of urgency is real for me, because the window of opportunity is closing, especially for my career. This year, next year or the year after, I have to get back there. Gotta get back to the Super Bowl, gotta get back there and win it."

In many ways, McNair's injuries may have helped punch his return-trip ticket, by forcing him to rely more on brain power and less on physical prowess. You simply can't sit out all week, then torch a good defensive team like the Giants in Week 13 -- completing 30 of 43 for 334 yards and three touchdowns, including the game-tying TD with 0:14 left -- without having established a mental mastery of the game. "What he did against the Giants," says Bill Belichick, "is as good as any quarterback can do."

McNair has done it using something akin to virtual practice. During the week he never gets closer than 10 yards to the action. While backup Neil O'Donnell runs the first-team offense, McNair, dressed in baggy gray sweats and a blue wool cap with a ball tucked under his arm, stands behind the huddle next to Heimerdinger and quarterback coach Craig Johnson, who quiz him on O'Donnell's reads and execution.

When the offense finishes, McNair and Johnson walk to an adjacent field. McNair then gets under center and Johnson flips play cards for him to read, shouting out imaginary defensive formations just before the snap. McNair takes his full seven-step drop, visualizing each pattern, the coverage and his read progression. He doesn't throw the ball; the seven steps are about the maximum his battered toe ligaments can withstand.

Heimerdinger believes the drop-back drill is critical in keeping McNair sharp, because smooth footwork plays such a key role in creating rhythm for a passer. A sloppy foot plant, for example, leads to an open stance and poor weight distribution, which in turn brings the arm away from the body and causes passes to float.

	McNair won't rest until the Titans have ther ring.

All the other hours McNair would normally spend in practice or the weight room have been shifted to cranium calisthenics like film study and chalk talk. Fisher even faxes the game plan to McNair 14 hours before the rest of the team, to give him as big a head start as possible. You can see how eager he is when it arrives: He pulls the hot copies from the fax machine page by page while they're still printing.

The Titans' offensive game plan now includes more shotgun snaps (McNair's bread and butter in college), more spread formations and even four- and five-receiver sets, meaning Heimerdinger will call for something that was once unthinkable: sitting George on third down. McNair is no longer asked to hand the ball off 35 times a game and then complete passes only in situations where everyone knows what's coming. Instead, the Titans pass early to get ahead, then hand the ball to George to kill the clock. "In an odd way Eddie's injury helped us all," says Heimerdinger. "It took all of our security blankets away. The easiest thing to do in this game is call a run. But it made me take Steve further as a quarterback."

Still, it was up to McNair to resist taking that first step out of the pocket. In the NFL, athletic passers become athletic quarterbacks only after they realize how best to use their gifted legs. McNair is now among the select few who have learned how to escape pressure, negotiate the pocket and buy more time in order to do the most damage, usually with his arm rather than his legs.

As a result, while the "scramble rules" for most teams instruct receivers to run back toward the passer when the play breaks down, Titans wideouts take off downfield, hoping a defensive back will be sucked toward the line of scrimmage by McNair's threat to run. Don't forget, he leads all quarterbacks in rushing since 1995. But when a DB commits to the run, McNair will simply pump fake and loft the ball over his head. Teams like the Ravens, who once employed a defensive back as a spy to follow McNair all over the field, thus daring him to beat them with his arm, are finding they can no longer spare the extra body.

How much better is McNair? The proof is in his improved pass distribution. Tight end Frank Wycheck -- a big, safe, short-yardage target -- led the Titans in receptions from 1996-2000. The last two seasons, Mason has paced Tennessee with 152 catches. "When I first got here six years ago, Steve's role running this offense was minimal," says Mason. "Now Steve runs the whole thing. His understanding of the game has totally changed."

Case in point: Tennessee, which came out flat in its regular-season finale in Houston, was clutching a 6-3 lead with 8:48 left in the fourth quarter when McNair was sacked and flagged for intentional grounding. The play backed the Titans up 15 yards to their 29, leaving them with a third-and-24. On that down and distance, the 1997 McNair would have dropped back, given a cursory look downfield and shot out of the pocket, trying to gain all the ground himself. The 2000 McNair would have likely dumped it to Wycheck for half the yards he needed.

Not this year's model. Crouched under center, McNair noticed Texans strong safety Eric Brown creeping up to jump on the slot receiver, Derrick Mason. His read: The Texans were faking Cover Two and running Cover One, meaning his far outside receiver, Drew Bennett, would have single coverage for just as long as McNair could freeze the free safety. He took the snap, dropped back, calmly ran through his reads, added an extra wink to the right to hold the safety, then lofted a 53-yard bomb to Bennett streaking down the left sideline. Five plays later George ran it in from the 4 to seal a 13-3 win, securing a bye and home-field advantage in the division round.

After the game, McNair marched to midfield to exchange pleasantries with his teammates and the Texans, many of whom sympathized with his being overlooked for the Pro Bowl. Although he hadn't reaggravated any of his multiple injuries during the game, you could tell by the way he walked and the look on his face that the painkillers were beginning to wear off.

As McNair turned to leave the field, one of the Texans approached with a handshake and a request: "When y'all get to San Diego, I'm gonna need 15 tickets or so." McNair flashed a rare grin and howled with delight at the very thought.

For the moment, he was pain-free.

This article appears in the January 20 issue of ESPN The Magazine.