Stephen A. Smith | Can Holcomb step up if Feeley should flop?

For one day, long before another Sunday in the National Football League had arrived on the calendar, Kelly Holcomb could have been A.J. Feeley, for all anyone knew.

Holcomb was the one, after all, who showed up for a news conference yesterday in a striped shirt. No suit. No tie, and evidently no interest in favorable first impressions. He was the one who appeared unfazed by the questions directed to his right, as if Holcomb was a water boy or something close to it.

Takeo Spikes, the Eagles' newly acquired linebacker, was the story during the first eight minutes of the meeting with the press at the team's NovaCare Complex. And he'll remain the story, too. Right up until the moment Donovan McNabb gets hurt again and Feeley becomes the instigator of far too many fights among tailgaters at Lincoln Financial Field, leaving Holcomb as Philadelphia's newest savior.

Assuming a worst-case scenario, of course.

You can go out and get a two-time Pro Bowl linebacker like Spikes - starving for postseason success, hungry to prove he's no longer inhibited after suffering a torn Achilles tendon in 2005, and who, by all accounts, is a natural-born leader. But here's the $4.5 million (that's Spikes' salary) question attached to the latest move:

Where will it get the Eagles if McNabb can't fully recover from his knee injury?

A show of hands for anyone comfortable with thinking only of Feeley as a potential save-the-day virtuoso. Does anyone think Feeley is all this team will need if McNabb, by some happenstance, can't go a full 16 games-plus?

"At this point, I'm not really worried about it," Holcomb said. "Like Takeo, we both want to be on a winning team. That's what we have here with the Philadelphia Eagles. These guys have been in the playoffs the last umpteen years. They've been to NFC championship games. They've been to the Super Bowl. Nobody really considered them to be much [last season] and they made it to the playoffs."

The Eagles were smart to insist that Holcomb be included in the Spikes deal with Buffalo. Holcomb did not directly address the question of McNabb, but he answered it all the same.

It would appear that the Eagles don't need Holcomb to make the playoffs any more than they need Spikes to make their defense respectable. When you're a perpetual presence in the postseason, tweaking your roster each year to maintain your status as Super Bowl contender, you don't need two players who lack championship experience as much as they need you.

But that almost doesn't apply in Holcomb's case, though, mainly because Jeff Garcia is gone and Feeley is supposed to qualify as a formidable replacement.

Go ahead and lie. Act as if you don't recall the number of carries by Brian Westbrook, the injuries to Westbrook and Correll Buckhalter, or Donté Stallworth's departure to New England, then pretend you don't have any questions.

Before this trade, you would have been lying to yourself. Not anymore.

Not if Holcomb passes for 429 yards, as he did as a Cleveland Brown in a playoff loss to Pittsburgh in 2003. Not if he completes 67.4 percent of his passes, as he did with the Bills in 2005.

"I just think that when you do get an opportunity to play, you have to produce," said Holcomb, who has been a backup for most of his NFL career, despite several starts with the Browns and Bills. "You're not the starter a lot of times. But you know that whoever is playing, they can go down at any given time. When you do get the opportunity, I've gone in and played well. That's what I'm looking for this year."

The Eagles' offense finished atop the NFL in three offensive categories last season. They were second overall in total yards per game, and third in passing. But at the end of the day, they are on the outside looking in for a reason.

Their defense may be a part of it - which explains why Spikes and his 100-plus tackles in seven of his nine NFL seasons is here - but so was an offense that was inconsistent. It handled its business against Washington and the New York Giants but was rendered ineffective against the likes of Jacksonville and Tennessee.

So somebody will have to step up if McNabb gets hurt.

Believe in Feeley if you want to. I'd prefer a better security blanket.

"The Eagles haven't indicated anything," Holcomb said. "I talked to Coach [Andy] Reid the other night and, to be honest with you, I'm not worried about it. Competition is what this business is about. I've had to compete for everything I've gotten in this league. So whatever it is, I'm all for it."

Sounds like Garcia all over again, huh?

Works for me!