The Human Grenade

Short was cut that year but made the Eagles in 2004. The next three seasons, he rarely saw the field on defense, racking up only 14 tackles in 29 games. But his name spread through the league with every kickoff.

In preparing for the Eagles, special-teams coaches altered their plans to deal with Short. Opponents fretted over collisions. Morey, who played for Pittsburgh in 2005, recalls helping his coach devise a strategy to slow Short down by hitting him before he could gather speed. It hardly calmed Morey's anxiety over the prospect of going head-to-head with a guy named Full Throttle. "I didn't sleep the night before," he says.

By last season, Short was thriving in the chaos of special teams, one of the few places where fear creeps onto an NFL field. "They're not all fearless," says Rutigliano. "Not like this guy." He was among the Eagles' leading tacklers on special teams. And when Sports Illustrated polled NFL players about football's most feared players, Short ranked in the Top 10, alongside Ravens Pro Bowler Ray Lewis and Steelers madman Joey Porter. Short, the magazine wrote, "is so recklessly aggressive on kick coverage that offensive and defensive players alike stop to behold his violent collisions." He was the only special-teams player on the list.

But with recklessness comes injury. Short suffered season-ending leg injuries in 2004 and 2005. He believes he's had seven or eight concussions since high school. "It's a car wreck, really," says Bob Brookover, who covers the Eagles for The Philadelphia Inquirer. "He was always at the center of the car wreck."

The worst came last season against the Browns. To the crowd, Short was just an anonymous Eagle flying down the field. But Jesse Mucciarone, a high-school teammate, was watching every step when Short, diving to make a tackle, took a knee to the head. "It knocked him out cold," says Mucciarone. "He was laying there motionless. The first thing I thought was that he broke his neck."

"It just snapped my neck," Short recalls. "Then my helmet came off." He describes such collisions with childlike enthusiasm, but he worries about how body and mind will age. "I don't know exactly how it all happened. I tore the corner of my mouth. My nose was about broke. It was all jacked up. I was bleeding everywhere. I didn't know what was going on. I was out cold."

Trainers rushed to slap him awake. "When they came out on the field, they said I was snoring," Short says. "I was snoring!"

They lifted him onto a cart. That's when one Browns player told him he "got what he deserved," says Short. "I lost it."

He saluted the Browns and their fans with a middle finger and a barrage of "motherfuckers."

"I went nuts," he says, smiling. "I guess it was just instinct, because I didn't really remember any of it. I guess the fans went from cheering to booing, and I was flipping them off. I got booed out of the stadium."

The injuries kept mounting after that. And special-teams players, while often invaluable, are equally expendable. Short may cover kickoffs as fiercely as anyone in football, but there are a dozen guys on every team who can serviceably handle the job. With three games to go last season, just as the Eagles started their playoff push, Short was nursing an ankle sprain. He was cut. Feared or not, his release was only big enough for a blurb inside the sports section.

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On a muggy June afternoon, Short pours himself into the driver's seat of his latest toy: a jet-black Audi S8. It's parked near a squatty business hotel in Berea. This is where Short -- along with others whose futures aren't sure enough to warrant the purchase of real estate -- stays during the Browns' off-season workouts.

Short's new wife, whom he met in Philadelphia and married in February, is upstairs cooking. So he wants to spend some time touring Berea in his new car. "It's got the Lamborghini engine in it," he says, opening it up on Bagley Road. "This one's a beast."

Short signed a one-year deal with the Browns in May, thrilled to play for his hometown team. But he knows his fate is a numbers game. "It's always gonna be a fight," he says. "And they're going to always make you believe that it's a bigger fight than it is."

Coaches won't discuss Short's future. But Rutigliano, who remains close to Browns' staff, says Short has impressed. "He's gonna make the team," Rutigliano says. "He's a 1950s guy. He is dirt-tough. I mean dirt-tough. He will electrify special teams. He covers kicks like a kamikaze pilot . . . This guy is Superman."

Of course, Short hopes fans will see him more often. Like all special teamers, he longs for more playing time and the trappings that come with it: more money, more impact, more job security. He's wary of being typecast -- a common fear of career backups.