When Domenik Hixon walks onto the field at University of Phoenix Stadium for Super Bowl XLII, he’ll have a chance to achieve the perfect ending to a season that couldn’t have started worse.

Hixon, the Giants’ best special teams player, was involved in a grisly on-field collision that cast a pall over the first week of the NFL season, when Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett suffered a near-fatal spinal cord injury when trying to tackle Hixon, who at the time was playing for the Denver Broncos. A month later he was unemployed. But his big plays in January are a big part of the reason the Giants will play into February.

On September 30, as Hixon walked off the field after the Broncos’ loss to the Indianapolis Colts, for all he knew he had just played his last game. A little-known special teams player who had suited up for just four games in his NFL career, Hixon had a fumble and a 15-yard penalty that day, and those are the types of mistakes that marginal players just can’t make.

Sure enough, the Broncos cut Hixon the next day. But the Giants claimed him off waivers, in a roster move that was hardly even noticed at the time but that played a major part in getting Big Blue to the Super Bowl. For all the well-deserved credit that Eli Manning and Plaxico Burress and Lawrence Tynes and Corey Webster are getting for the Giants’ NFC Championship game victory over the Green Bay Packers, no Giant made more big plays down the stretch at Lambeau Field Sunday night than Hixon.

Hixon set the Giants up in excellent field position for their final touchdown drive with a 33-yard kickoff return late in the third quarter Sunday.

In the fourth quarter he had an even better kickoff return, a 36-yard runback on which he showed a tremendous burst of speed to the outside and could have scored if the Packers’ kicker hadn’t tripped him up. Late in the fourth quarter, Hixon was the first Giant down the field on a punt and was in on the tackle of Packers returner Tramon Williams. And when the Packers punted four plays later and Giants return man R.W. McQuarters fumbled, it was Hixon who pounced on the ball.

In the last month, starting with a kickoff return touchdown in the Giants’ regular-season finale against the New England Patriots and through Sunday’s win in Green Bay, Hixon has become known as a talented special teams player. But for most of the 2007 NFL season, Hixon was known only as the Bronco whom Everett was tackling when Everett suffered a severe spinal cord injury. The collision, which came during the first game of Hixon’s NFL career, left Everett motionless on the field, and doctors said he could have died and would never walk again.

Everett, however, has made an almost complete recovery, and on December 23 he walked into Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo to watch the Bills take on the Giants. After the game, Hixon and Everett met for the first time, and Hixon has said it was a relief to see Everett back on his feet.

Hixon’s path to the NFL was an unusual one. He comes from a military family and was born in Germany. (He speaks fluent German, a skill he’ll no doubt put to use during Super Bowl media festivities, which always draw reporters from around the world.) He played his college football at Akron, where he was a four-year starter at two different positions. In his freshman and sophomore seasons he started at free safety, but before his junior year the coaching staff decided it needed some big plays on offense and moved him to wide receiver. By his senior year, Hixon was a good enough receiver that he set school records for catches (75) and yards (1,210) in a season. He also finished third in the entire NCAA in all-purpose yards, with a combined 2,139 receiving, rushing, and return yards.

Akron isn’t exactly a football factory, however, and Hixon wasn’t even invited to the Indianapolis scouting combine. But in separate workouts for NFL scouts, he showed off his blistering speed, running the 40-yard dash in less than 4.4 seconds. That drew the attention of several NFL teams, and when the Broncos chose him in the fourth round of the NFL draft, he was the highest-drafted player who didn’t attend the combine.

Unfortunately, Hixon suffered a foot injury that spring, and because of that injury he sat out all of 2006. His rocky start in 2007 could have signaled the end of a short career. But the Giants wisely recognized his talent, and saw that his college experience on both offense and defense suited him well for his roles on the Giants’ special teams, where he both returns kicks and tackles opposing kick returners.

Hixon is listed on the roster as a wide receiver, but he rarely plays on offense. He got the ball on two offensive plays all season, catching a 5-yard pass in the Giants’ Week 12 loss to the Minnesota Vikings and losing 8 yards on a trick play the following week against the Chicago Bears. Other than that, he’s been a pure special teamer.

That’s where he has the biggest chance to make an impact on the biggest game of the season, but the Giants ought to consider putting the ball in his hands on offense in the Super Bowl. To beat the Patriots, the Giants are going to need big plays, and Hixon is emerging as a big-play player.

Mr. Smith is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.