Rare Birds

The season was lost, and the Eagles knew it. On Sunday, Nov. 19, in a home game against the Tennessee Titans, Donovan McNabb, Philadelphia's franchise quarterback--the franchise, period--was knocked out for the season with a torn ACL. Lifelong athletes all, NFL players abide by the unwritten code of the locker room in which no despair, however deeply felt, is voiced. Yet the Eagles understood. "It was as big a hit as you can imagine," recalls guard Todd Herremans. "We all felt this huge letdown." � The Eagles lost that game and the next, to fall to 5--6. A season and a half removed from a three-point Super Bowl loss to the New England Patriots, they were spiraling downward in the standings, climbing in the draft and counting the weeks until minicamp. "We needed something to happen," says Pro Bowl guard Shawn Andrews. "And we needed it right away."

Then came the NFL's unlikeliest resurrection, driven by a quarterback seemingly past his prime, claimed off the NFL slag heap; and by a fifth-year back beloved by his teammates, respected by his peers, yet lacking the signature performance that would validate his stature.

On Sunday night the Eagles beat the New York Giants 23--20 in an NFC wild-card playoff game. The deciding points came on David Akers's 38-yard field goal, kicked through a steady rain from the shredded Lincoln Financial Field turf as time expired; but the game belonged to 36-year-old Jeff Garcia, now 6--1 as McNabb's replacement, and to 5'8", 203-pound Brian Westbrook, who ran for 141 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries. On the game-winning drive Westbrook, battling severe stomach cramps from the second quarter on, rushed four times for 34 yards--"He reminds me of myself when I was young," the Giants' retiring Tiki Barber would say in defeat--while Garcia completed both of his passes for 13 yards. Now the Eagles will face the New Orleans Saints on Saturday night in the Superdome, two games from the Super Bowl.

The resurgence began at quarterback. Garcia's career was the stuff of epic poetry long before he signed with the Eagles last March. Unrecruited out of Gilroy ( Calif.) High, he played a year at Gavilan College under his father, Bob, followed by three seasons at San Jose State and five in the Canadian Football League before Bill Walsh gave him a shot with the San Francisco 49ers in 1999. "Bill stuck his head in my office one day after the '98 season and tossed a tape on my desk," says Marty Mornhinweg, then the 49ers' offensive coordinator and now the Eagles' assistant head coach. "You could tell pretty quickly that Jeff was very competitive and athletic."

Garcia played five years in San Francisco, making the Pro Bowl in his last three, but left in 2003 when he and the rebuilding Niners couldn't agree on contract terms. Soon thereafter he had controversy thrust upon him by former teammate Terrell Owens, who in an interview with Playboy, was asked, " Jeff Garcia has denied media rumors that he's gay. What do you think?" replied, "If it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, by golly, it is a rat." The comment came after Owens had complained during their final season together that Garcia wasn't throwing him enough passes.

Garcia has seldom addressed T.O.'s insinuation but told SI last week, "He created a discomfort that I've had to deal with when I go into competitive environments, like visiting stadiums. I have to deal with that because of ignorance that came out of somebody else's mouth. There's nothing wrong with anybody else's personal choices, but what he said, that's not me." ( Garcia is engaged to Carmella DeCesare--Playboy's 2004 Playmate of the Year.)

Garcia became the Cleveland Browns' starter in 2004, but his statistics and spirits both suffered. The following year he intended to sign with Denver or Seattle as the backup to an established veteran on a solid franchise. Instead he went to the hapless Detroit Lions. "At the last minute I [thought], Maybe I can be a starter again," he says. "It was a mistake." Garcia broke his fibula in the preseason and played in only six games for a 5--11 team.

A free agent again in 2006, he jumped at the chance to join the Eagles, drawn, he says, by "stability and the chance to be a part of a winning organization."

Mornhinweg evaluated Garcia--again--before Philadelphia signed him. "It looked like he had some juice left," says Mornhinweg. With McNabb healthy, however, Garcia was scarcely used, even in practice. "Before the game when Donovan got hurt," says Herremans, "I think Jeff took one snap all week, and that was in the walk-through."

On his own, though, Garcia prepared. He lives in a town house two minutes from the Eagles' facility and keeps his 200-pound body solid with four days of weightlifting a week. After losing to the Colts in his first start, he led Philadelphia to five consecutive wins and the NFC East title. In those five games Garcia threw seven touchdown passes and two interceptions. And his passion has inspired the Eagles. In one memorable sequence, on Dec. 17 against the Giants, he ran for a first down, then spiked the ball, drawing a 15-yard penalty that more than paid for itself in emotional currency. "Personally, I loved it," says Andrews.