As they sprint now toward the NFC Championship Game in Arizona, people are searching for the reason the Eagles turned themselves around after stumbling so badly in the middle of the season. It might be the wrong question, though. More meaningful might be the opposite perspective: not why they achieved so much as why they didn't implode.

The reason is character: trite, saccharine, intangible, immeasurable. Eyes forward, mouths closed, they somehow weathered their own personal triple whammy: excruciating loss to the Giants, infuriating tie at Cincinnati, quarterback-benching loss at Baltimore. They were wobbled, yes, but they never fell.

"This is an incredibly high-character group of guys," said Jeffrey Lurie, the Eagles' owner. "When you think back to all of the losses by 1 yard, or 1 foot, or a fumble in Dallas in that early game - there are just so many little things that contributed to so many moments [from which] the team had to come back . . . Tremendous courage, just tremendous fortitude, that's what it takes in the NFL."

Lurie said, "This is a group that really gets it." But when you ask him if he ever doubted that, Lurie acknowledges the obvious.

"I'm sure I did," he said. "It's only human to wonder when you're going through some down moments - certainly in Baltimore, after that game. But I knew we, Andy and the team, [have] always tried to assemble very high-character players with very few exceptions. That's when you learn about your team, when you have imperfections during the season. They just have a lot of courage and are able to play under stressful situations, must-win situations, no-margin-for-error situations. It's coached very well, it's a credit to them, but it's really two more.

"We've accomplished nothing," Lurie said.

Which is true, except that it isn't, because there is value in the simple act of enduring. This team really was teetering after that Baltimore loss. If it had developed public divisions, if the team had been torn by its inconsistencies, Andy Reid really could have been in trouble. If players quit on coaches, coaches have a problem - and that is everybody, even Reid.

But it never happened. As

Reid said, "The guys have maintained faith in each other." That 5-5-1 record never ripped them apart.

"You've just got so many veterans in here [with] that calm personality," cornerback Sheldon Brown said. "Just go with the flow, whatever. Work, work, work. Don't care about the individual accolades and all that crap. It's just . . . playing, and that's the mentality that everybody has. I don't think that's a coincidence."

But how is that attitude communicated to younger players on the roster, players who have never been through either the highs or the lows with Reid?

"You really don't have to say anything," Brown said. "They just see you work. They don't see you bitching and moaning and groaning. They just see, every day, 'This is my job and this is what I'm expected to do.' And you just fall in line. Guys that did it before me, you just come in and learn the system and keep going."

It seems simple enough. But there are so many teams at so many levels of athletics - in every sport - that cannot police themselves that way. Sports writers are experts at cultivating malcontents, but it is a grim, unrewarding task in the Eagles' locker room. They have some emotional players, and some who get more disappointed than others, and some who display their feelings more readily than others, and some whose analysis of situations is sharper than others'. But you don't find people bent on divisiveness - and it does matter.

Again, it all seems a terrible cliche. But when you look at the players who have been here for all five trips to the championship game - Donovan McNabb, David Akers, Correll Buckhalter, Brian Dawkins, Jon Runyan and Tra Thomas - what you see, more than anything, is solid people. When you ask Thomas if he is especially proud that the young players didn't splinter beneath them, he readily agrees.

"Yeah, that's good that our young guys never wavered,"

Thomas said. "They just kept plugging and they stayed with us. We've just got great veteran leadership keeping everybody focused in."

Did he say anything?

"No, there was no need to,"

Thomas said. "I think everybody knew what we had to do. We're all professionals, so everybody just steps up their game and elevates and we take it from there."

It all seems simple enough. Then again, most of the important things tend to be that way. *

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