Scouts were on hand last Thursday for Dixon's private workout -- one last shot to show he's ready for the pros. Rich Frishman/SI

Practicing with the injury was easy; keeping it a secret was not. Outside of coaches, trainers and doctors, no one knew the results of Dixon's MRI. He did not tell his teammates, his roommates, even his father. "I didn't want anybody to panic," he says.

On Nov. 15, Oregon played a Thursday night game at Arizona, a nationally televised showcase for Dixon and the Ducks. Before the kickoff Dennis Dixon Sr. visited his son in the locker room and found him stretched out on a massage table. "Dad, I've been keeping something from you," Dixon said. His father laughed. "No you haven't," he said. "I could tell you were hurt."

Trainers fitted Dixon for a knee brace, and coaches devised a game plan to keep him in the pocket as much as possible. "We were holding our breath," said trainer Kim Terrell. On the game's first series Dixon scrapped the plan and ran 39 yards for a touchdown. The medical staff exhaled. But later in the first quarter Dixon faked a handoff, rolled left and planted his left foot in the turf. The foot stuck. The knee buckled. He went down without being touched. The ACL was completely shot. "It was like someone punched you in the stomach," said James Harris, Oregon's director of sports nutrition. "And as soon as you started to breathe, someone punched you in the stomach again."

The Heisman was gone. So was the national title. Dixon would not play another down for Oregon; the Ducks lost to Arizona and then dropped their final two regular-season games. Dennis's father rushed from the stands to the field, and when he got there, his son's first words were, "I don't regret a thing." As Terrell helped Dixon off the field, he asked her, "Did you see my touchdown?" Then: "When do we start rehab?"

It started that night. Dixon's mother, Jueretta, had died of breast cancer the summer after his senior year at San Leandro (Calif.) High, and Dennis's father didn't know if his son would be able to get on a plane for Eugene. Sitting in an otherwise silent visitors' locker room at Arizona, he reminded Dennis, "This can't be worse than losing your mom." With that, Dixon walked back onto the field and put on a headset, Oregon's new assistant quarterbacks coach.

Because he wanted to travel with the team, Dixon didn't have surgery until Dec. 15. Two days later he was walking without crutches. After five days he was riding a bike. In two weeks he was throwing, and a month after that, he was running. Day after day, as Dixon lay on a massage table in the training center, Terrell tested the knee's range of motion and Dixon watched the myriad televisions tuned to ESPN. The draftniks didn't mention him as they talked about other quarterbacks -- Matt Ryan, Brian Brohm, Chad Henne -- whom he had outplayed for 2 1/2 months.

Agent pitches to potential draftees are often superficial, all about dropping names and promises. Jeff Sperbeck of Octagon went to Dixon in early January with a concrete proposal. He wanted to turn Dixon's dormant Heisman website into a platform to broadcast his rehab. The site would rebuild Dixon's image as trainers rebuilt his knee. He wouldn't be ready to work out in February at the NFL combine or in March on Oregon's pro day, but the Internet could help persuade skeptical NFL general managers that Dixon was still worth drafting.

The plan appealed to Dixon's taste for transparency. "Besides," he says, "I don't mind the spotlight." Oregon, with its sophisticated approach to marketing and technology, offered the perfect backdrop. Terrell would explain Dixon's regimen. Offensive coordinator Chip Kelly would put him through drills and film study. Fisher would record his progress and edit, with Sperbeck's help. Kyle Wiest, an assistant in the football office, would update the site. Says Fisher, "Nobody had done anything like it."

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