Comeback Artist

This is the life.

Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Tommy Maddox eased back and crossed his hands behind his head, careful not to scuff the plush leather couch with his made-to-order sneakers. Outside it was close to 100 degrees, but Maddox was kicking back in the air-conditioned luxury of an extra-wide motor home reserved just for him. He was parked outside Staples Center this month on the set of a Reebok commercial, hanging out until the director called for him.

Maddox -- the former first-round pick from UCLA who washed out of the NFL after four years, sold insurance for three, then wended his way back to the big time by way of the Arena Football League and XFL -- would receive the comeback-athlete-of-the-year ESPY that night. He already had won the NFL’s version, taking over for Kordell Stewart after an 0-3 start and leading the Steelers to a 10-5-1 record, the AFC North Division title and into the second round of the playoffs.

“I really believe that my best football’s still way ahead of me,” said Maddox, 31, who on Saturday began training camp as a starting NFL quarterback, something he has never done.

“It’s fun for me,” he said. “And it keeps getting more fun for me, that’s the exciting thing. I get to be a member of the best sports club in America. I used to go to my high school and work out by myself to try and stay in shape. It was a dungeon of a gym. So to be able to go to the facilities we have and work out and be able to play in front of thousands of people, it’s not a bad gig.”

It could be better. Maddox will earn a base salary of $650,000 this season with an additional $75,000 in bonuses -- chicken feed by NFL standards. The average annual pay of starting quarterbacks in the league is $5,387,000, and Maddox isn’t even making as much as his backup, Charlie Batch, who signed a two-year, $2-million deal.

Team insiders say the Steelers want to be sure Maddox wasn’t a one-season wonder and that he can continue playing at a high level. Stewart is gone now, trying to revive his career with the Chicago Bears, and Maddox no longer has to look over his shoulder. He earned $525,000 last season -- less than 10% of Stewart’s $6.3 million -- and this season will be the league’s lowest-paid starting quarterback. He refuses to dwell on that.

“Obviously, I want to support my family as well as I can support them,” he said. “But I’ve worked too hard to get back to where I’m at, and wanting to be a starting quarterback in the NFL, to all of a sudden start worrying about that. We all make good livings, and I’ve been on the other side of it.”

Three years ago, when he began the second phase of his football career, Maddox was served a heaping helping of humility by the New Jersey Red Dogs, a now-defunct arena team. After signing with them, he arrived at Newark Airport with the expectation that someone would be waiting for him. He waited for three hours before checking himself into a nearby hotel. It seems the coach had too many errands to run and picking up his new quarterback slipped his mind.

The Red Dogs did come through on their promise to provide Maddox with a car, although it was a minivan that came with strings attached: He had to shuttle around his teammates who needed rides. Suddenly, the big man on campus was a soccer mom.

“There were about three of us who had minivans,” he said. “During camp we had about 30 guys there, so you’d break meetings and everybody would load up in the minivans and we’d go to practice.”

The AFL was small-time then, back before NFL owners began buying teams and NBC started broadcasting games on Sunday afternoons. Maddox made about $60,000 that season, counting his endorsement deals, and he was living large compared to his teammates. Everything had a rinky-dink feel.

“We watched film in the basement of an old college in New Jersey on a wall,” he said. “We practiced on the outfield of a high school baseball field. We were out at practice one day and they were having a tournament. A game started and [the coach said], ‘All right, that’s it for practice!’ Practice was about 30 minutes long.”

All in all, Maddox was just happy to be playing football again. Denver used a first-round pick on him in 1992, after his sophomore season at UCLA, even though the Broncos already had John Elway. Coach Dan Reeves didn’t have a great relationship with his star quarterback, though, and he saw drafting Maddox as a way to send Elway a message.

Maddox started four games as a rookie, filling in when Elway was injured, but he never really hit his stride. Maddox threw only one pass his second season, then bounced from the Los Angeles Rams to the New York Giants, who released him in training camp in 1996. He failed a tryout with the Atlanta Falcons the next season.

After his first tour of the NFL ended, he spent three years selling insurance in Dallas before the urge to play football again was just too strong. With the support of his wife, Jennifer, at home taking care of their two young kids, he rebuilt his career from the ground up, first in the AFL then the XFL.

Back when the sting of NFL rejection was fresh, Maddox scoffed at the notion of playing in any lesser league.

“I had a chance to play in the World League but I just wouldn’t do it,” he said. “I kept thinking, ‘Somebody’s got to pick me up. I’ve got to at least have a shot to go to camp.’ ”

The phone wasn’t ringing. Humbling questions came at every turn.

“Those moments came daily,” he said. “Camp starts, and you just get asked daily: ‘Why aren’t you playing? There are 90 quarterbacks out there going to camp right now, why aren’t you one of them?’ There was really no way to answer that because I didn’t know. The only thing I could say was I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“That’s when I realized I’d rather be playing somewhere than answering these questions.”

Sure, he had to suit up for practice in his minivan, but Maddox had a blast in the AFL. He threw a team-record 62 touchdown passes and further developed the quick release that helps make up for his limited mobility. He then moved on to the XFL, where, in the league’s only year of existence, he led the Los Angeles Xtreme to a championship and was selected league most valuable player.

After the season, Maddox faxed a letter to every NFL team asking for a tryout. The only positive response came from Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, agent Vann McElroy worked out a deal for him to play in Canada for the Calgary Stampeders, the former team of NFL quarterbacks Doug Flutie and Jeff Garcia.

“I thought, man, this thing is really moving in the right direction,” McElroy said.

But Maddox took a risk and passed on the offer. Two days later, the Steelers called. They signed him for their 2001 training camp as their fourth quarterback behind Stewart, Kent Graham and Tee Martin.

Maddox wound up playing in three games that season, completing seven of nine passes -- including one that covered 57 yards -- with one touchdown and one interception. His coaches liked what they saw.

When Stewart got off to a slow start in 2002, the Steelers turned to Maddox during a Week 3 game against Cleveland. He secured the starting job with a 16-13 victory, then led Pittsburgh to four victories in five games.

On Nov. 17, his amazing comeback took a terrifying turn. In the third quarter of a game at Tennessee, he was knocked off his feet by Titan linebacker Keith Bulluck, and suffered brain and spinal-cord concussions when his head hit the turf. He lost consciousness at first, then couldn’t move his arms and legs when he woke up. He spent the night at Baptist Hospital in Nashville -- only vaguely aware the Steelers had lost, 31-23 -- and was transferred to a Pittsburgh hospital the next day. By the time he left Nashville he had regained feeling in his extremities, but sat out the next two games and was replaced by Stewart.

Maddox returned Dec. 8, and, after an embarrassing loss to Houston in which he had two passes intercepted and was sacked six times, he finished the regular season with a three-game winning streak.

In the playoffs, Maddox cemented his place in Steeler history. He directed three touchdown drives in the fourth quarter of a snowy game against Cleveland, orchestrating a 17-point comeback that Steeler owner Dan Rooney ranked just behind the “Immaculate Reception” as the most thrilling moment in team history.

The headline stripped across the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the next day read simply: The Comeback.

There are things the Steelers would like to change about Maddox, ways they hope to refine his game. He has a magnificent arm, and sometimes uses it to force passes into impossibly narrow cracks. Sixteen of his 377 passes were intercepted last season.

“Probably in the middle of the year I did take too many risks,” he conceded. “But an inch here, an inch there and everybody says they’re great plays.... If you start worrying about all the bad things that are going to happen, you aren’t going to throw a lot of balls that you should throw. There’s still got to be a point of, see it, throw it, let it go.”