Armed And Dangerous

Sifting through the dusty contents of the wild-card box every year, we search for the hidden gem, the team that might survive the wild-card round, win three playoff games and wind up with a Super Bowl ring. Last year we found one, the Pittsburgh Steelers. This year there are two possibilities. In a season in which most of the eight first-round participants are wringing their hands over the way their regular seasons ended, the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Jets have burst forth with confidence.

The Eagles ' season had been troubled even with quarterback Donovan McNabb running things, but then it really tanked after he was lost in Game 10 with a knee injury. The fans screamed for A.J. Feeley , their miracle worker who came off the bench and bailed them out after McNabb went down in 2002. Instead they got Jeff Garcia.

Poor guy. Cut by the San Francisco 49ers in 2004, his body practically shattered by two years of hard labor in the lead mines of the NFL , Cleveland and Detroit , Garcia was picked up this year by Philly because offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg remembered the good days they had shared in San Francisco . Then Andy Reid , as a testament to his ingenuity as a coach and to his humility, turned the play-calling over to Mornhinweg. The result has been five straight wins.

Humble quarterback number 2, Chad Pennington of the Jets, had to survive a four-man competition to earn his position, this after two years of shoulder injuries had made him a very iffy proposition. He won the job, played an entire 16-game season for the first time in his seven-year career and quarterbacked New York to the three straight victories it needed to enter the tournament. So a club that finished last in the AFC East last year and was picked to do the same this year is in the playoffs. It's a resilient team that gets through the games it has to. Unspectacular, perhaps. But at this time last year, who was dazzled by Pittsburgh ?