So that's how it is going to be this week: Joe Jurevicius will try to be two places at once. Joe Jurevicius has a game to play and blue eyes to imagine, and somehow he can't let one get in the way of the other. He has a son on a respirator, and teammates on a roll, and he wishes the NFL would just move the game to Tampa. Just move it.

	Jurevicius has passed his trademark toughness to his newborn son.

Instead, he keeps a photograph. It is a picture of Michael William Jurevicius, his 9-day-old son, and, in this photograph, Michael is laying still in a Florida Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It is not an awful picture or a macabre picture -- not by any stretch -- because this is the photograph that will get Joe Jurevicius through the week.

Never underestimate the power of suggestion, because that is what Joe Jurevicius is living on right now. When he arrived in Super Bowl land Tuesday night, Joe called home and heard his wife Meagan say that Michael had finally opened his eyes. That Mike had taken a look around. And you should've seen Joe. If he'd had a football, he would've spiked it. Because he knew then he'd done the right thing in coming.

He is a wide receiver for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the same wide receiver who broke Philadelphia's heart last Sunday. He turned a short pass into a game-turning 70-yard gain, and, if anyone deserved to be at this Super Bowl, he did. And he'd certainly have a large role to play, as the Bucs' third wide receiver. Typically, the third wide receiver gets matched up with the defense's weakest defensive backs, and, that's why people like Joe Jurevicius and Jerry Porter might very well have huge impacts on Sunday's game. But Joe didn't want to be here unless Michael was stable and making progress, and, when he heard that Mike flashed his baby blues Tuesday night ... well, that was progress. Not only was it progress, it was a suggestion that everything could be normal one day. Not soon, but maybe one day.

So that's why he's here -- because his son will still be here next week, and the Super Bowl won't. And that's why Joe Jurevicius could sit through a media session on Wednesday and remain remarkably upbeat about a sick child he's only been able to hold in his arms once. While wearing a FDNY t-shirt, he spoke about calling his wife "every hour on the hour'' for updates. He spoke about making sure Michael's first words are daddy instead of mommy. He would not specifically say what was wrong with his son -- who was born 3 weeks premature at 6 pounds, one ounce -- but he did say, with a chuckle, that the boy "has big hands, which he gets from me.''

It's not an easy task, staying positive when your first born is under heavy sedation. But these are the tricks Joe Jurevicius is using right now. Brad Johnson, his quarterback, recently gave all the Buccaneer receivers and linemen 20 inch flat-screen TVs, and Joe wants his wife to put that TV right next to Michael's head in the hospital -- so he can listen to the game Sunday.

New dads like to dream, and so that's what Joe Jurevicius does. He dreams of scoring a touchdown Sunday, and honoring his son while he's in the end zone. He dreams of his son watching this Super Bowl on tape some day, and he dreams of telling his son about everything that went on. Everything.

Dreaming is the only way this week can work. That, and anger, of course. Anger is how he was able to fly into Philadelphia last Saturday, having not practiced all week, and make a 70-yard catch. Anger -- every once in a while -- is good.

"I know I had a lot of aggression in me last weekend,'' Jurevicius says. " I kind of explained it as controlled rage. I had a lot of emotion built up inside of me, and I don't know if there's any better way to let frustration out than to play the game of football.''

He doesn't intend to come all this way to California -- and play a pitiful game. One thing about Joe Jurevicius, he rises to the occasion. In fact, when he and his wife Meagan found out they were pregnant last year, Joe wanted to know the sex of the baby, and Meagan did not. So Joe suggested they play a game of backgammon, with the winner getting their way.

Except that was a stupid idea. "I think I'd lost 1,000 straight games of backgammon," he says.

So what did Joe do? He went out and beat her that day. That's how he found out he was having a son.

"My record's 1 and 1,000 right now,'' he says. "But I won my biggest backgammon game ever.''

He's a big-game player.

And so far, so is his son.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tom.friend@espnmag.com.