Dilfer stays on his feet Gary Shelton, The St.Petersburg Times, published 8 December 1997 On a day that held nothing but pain for Trent Dilfer, the best thing you can say is he was able to walk away from it. He hobbled down the visitor's sideline, a losing scoreboard over his shoulder, and it was as if there were a thousand shards of glass inside his right ankle, cutting new flesh with every stride. He moved slowly, stepping and wincing across the yard lines, his agony obvious to anyone who cared to look. Finally, he stopped and looked into the stands, where it seemed a thousand Packers fans were hanging over the rails, yelling and screaming. And just like that it wasn't Dilfer's ankle that ached so much as his soul. "This p----- me off," he said. "It's embarrassing. This is our stadium." The scene sort of summed up the day for Dilfer. There was pain everywhere he looked. In his ankle and in his heart. In the middle of the field and on the sideline. In the huddle and on the scoreboard. The Bucs still aren't the Packers, and Dilfer certainly isn't Brett Favre. But give him credit for this. He is a tough son of a gun, and he is as competitive as any quarterback in the league. He was willing to run against the best in the NFL, even though he had only one leg to do it with. It was over. The game, the season, all of it. That was the thought that came to mind when Dilfer lay on the ground, his hands over his face mask. It came to Dilfer's mind, too. He had been looking downfield in the final 2 minutes of the first half, and he had just decided to take off and run. Then Reggie White came in from behind and sacked him, rolling over the back of his leg. As he went down, Dilfer felt a pop in the ankle. He thought it was broken, which would have meant his season. Maybe the Bucs' season, too. White came back onto the field to give him encouragement. As they lifted Dilfer into a cart, Packers players came over, one by one, to wish him well. It was the sight of a team wishing a seriously injured player farewell. As he sat on the cart, however, Dilfer managed to calm himself. Wait for the X-rays, he thought, before you freak out. Turns out the X-rays were negative. By the time the Bucs returned to the locker room for halftime, Dilfer was walking. And if he could walk, Dilfer decided, he could play. "I don't want to sound too heroic," he said. "A lot of people have done this. I thought I could. I just couldn't move." Dilfer hit only 2 of 7 passes in the third quarter. Every time he dropped back, he landed three times on the ankle and then planted. Every time his foot landed, it was as if someone cleated him. Finally, on his second series, he missed the read on a safety blitz, and Eugene Robinson dropped him for an 8-yard loss on the final play of the third quarter. It was a case of worrying more about his ankle, Dilfer admitted, than the defense. "You try not to think about it, but you just can't help it," Dilfer said. "That was a matter of worrying more about getting into my drop than what the defense was doing." When Dilfer reached the sideline, backup Steve Walsh was waiting for him. "I told him, `You're a tough SOB, and you want to lead your team, and that's commendable. This was courageous. But you can't be in there. There are plenty of games left. Get yourself out of there.' " Dilfer walked to the bench area, and offensive coordinator Mike Shula was on the phone. He told Dilfer he was considering putting Walsh in. Dilfer took a deep breath and said, "That's probably the right decision." That hurt, too, if you want to know the truth. For the rest of the game, Dilfer limped around and watched and talked to everyone who would listen. "When I knew I wasn't going to play anymore, that's as crushed as I've been all season," Dilfer said. "It was hard, brutally hard. I didn't know what to do with myself, whether to help with the play calls or walk around and encourage people. Your pride and everything you have tells you to stay in the game. But ultimately, you have to look at the scoreboard and say, `Do we have a better chance of winning with me or with Steve?" Dilfer didn't like the answer he came up with. He turned control of his team's offense over to Walsh. "You could feel the momentum shift in our favor when they took him off on the John Deere," Packers linebacker Seth Joyner said. "Even when he came back and the fans kind of went crazy, he wasn't mobile enough to get the job done." The best news for the Bucs is that Dilfer expects to be back next week against the Jets. There is much debate around the league of what Dilfer is or is not, but Bucs fans know he is their only chance. For that reason, there was something good to take from the sight of Dilfer limping into the evening. He wasn't on a cart, he wasn't on crutches, and he wasn't in a hospital. He is in pain, but he isn't finished. You can say that about the quarterback, you can say that about the team.