Finally healthy, Bucs' Smith resumes fight for job

As sure as the sun, this game will beat you up. It will batter and bruise you, leave you limp and lame. And Clifton Smith knows it.

That's why Smith didn't think much of it the first time he nearly collapsed in pain while trying to roll out of bed a couple of months ago.

"I figured it just came with the territory of playing football," said Smith, the Buccaneers' return man.

"You know, you're just real sore and everything. But then it wouldn't go away. That's when I knew something was wrong."

Something, but what? A battery of tests revealed some swelling in Smith's right knee, but for the longest time, trainers and doctors couldn't figure out the source of it, or why the swelling was causing

Smith's entire body to ache.

"I'd wake up in the morning,'' Smith said, "and it was hard to walk. My back hurt, my legs hurt, my whole body hurt. It was really kind of frustrating to have to deal with."

The frustration lingered until just a couple weeks ago, when the Bucs finally hit on the problem: a crystallization of the fluid in Smith's right knee joint, commonly known as gout.

It's a centuries-old malady, one that's been growing in frequency in recent decades and strikes millions of victims a year like an acute case of arthritis, but Smith had never heard of it.

"I pulled my phone out and Googled it right there," Smith said of his response to the diagnosis. "I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that it was painful.

"Everything just swells up, and you wake up in the morning and your knee hurts, and when you try to stand up, your back hurts to the point where it kind of takes you a while to get going. I've never felt pain like that before."

Wednesday was the first day in nearly two months Smith hasn't felt that pain or spent the whole day fighting through it. It was the first "good day" he's had in weeks, he said.

You have to wonder, though, if it didn't come too late. While the Pro Bowl return man has been sidelined, missing several camp workouts and two preseason games, several contenders for his return job have emerged.

The most notable may be Micheal Spurlock. The first Buccaneer player to return a kickoff for a touchdown, Spurlock has flashed not only as a return man but also as a receiver. He has two punt returns for 28 yards and four catches for 95 yards and one touchdown.

Then there's rookie receiver Preston Parker. He hasn't caught a pass in the preseason, but he has shown up as a return man, running back seven punts for 90 yards.

Finally there's Sammie Stroughter. He had a 9.9-yard punt-return average and 29.5-yard kick-return average last season while Smith was sidelined by concussions. And Stroughter is not going away.

Neither is Smith. Healthy and feeling strong again, he said his intention is to go into the third exhibition game Saturday against Jacksonville as if he's still trying to make the team.

"I never take anything for granted," said Smith, who first made it onto the Tampa Bay roster after signing as an undrafted free agent in 2008. "In this game, you always have to keep fighting.''

Smith has won most of his fights. A boxer off the field, mostly to stay in shape, he fought the odds to earn that initial roster spot and turned it into a Pro Bowl berth.

He also has fought off the effects of two concussions, which both occurred last year, and he seems finally to be winning the fight against the gout-like symptoms he's battled this year.

"He finally got on the right meds or whatever and he feels great again," Bucs coach Raheem Morris said. "So now we're looking forward to seeing Cliff out there and hopefully we'll see Cliff be his old dynamic self again."

No one wants to see that more than Smith himself. He described the bout he had with gout as one of the most difficult of his career. But he's ready to come up off the mat and prove it can't knock him out.

"I felt bad for a good month-and-a-half, but I feel great now,'' Smith said. "We're taking care of the problem, and we've got it figured out just in the nick of time, so I'm ready to get back out there. I'm ready to go.''