They stand shoulder to shoulder and lean in helmet to helmet, trying to block out the chaotic noise outside their tight huddle. It is there, with the 11 men standing in their designated places in an intimate circle, that Donovan McNabb gives out instructions. The play. The snap count. The assignments.

Sometimes there is profanity. Sometimes there are jokes. Sometimes McNabb is simply all business, reviewing the situation, divulging the plan, and getting out. The play clock is always ticking. Time is of the essence.

What really happens inside the Eagles' huddle is a secret. It is for those 11 players to reveal, and few - Freddie Mitchell being the obvious exception - rarely do, for the huddle is sacred. It is theirs, not ours. You can see it, see how the linemen are to McNabb's left, the skill-position players to his right, and the tight end straight ahead of him.

But you can't know the huddle, can't understand how tough it is to hear inside, how tight it has to be, how important it really is, unless you are there. It's protective and protected. It is a sliver of safety. And then, with a unified clap, it is gone.

For the 10th season, the Eagles' huddle is McNabb's. Sure, there have been occasional fill-ins - Koy Detmer, A.J. Feeley, Mike McMahon, Jeff Garcia - and one of these days it will belong to quarterback-in-waiting Kevin Kolb. But for now, McNabb is the king, the huddle his palace. He sets the tone. He decides what works best, whether to be supportive or combative. He is in charge, and his teammates feed off his direction.

McNabb has been known to yell, to "get [ticked] off," as his longtime right tackle Jon Runyan said, but more often than not, McNabb favors levity, humor and support. It is a reflection of his overall demeanor. He is, after all, true to himself.

"I strive for the huddle to be very relaxed and everyone focused on me," McNabb said. "It has been that way. If things go wrong, if you have a dropped ball or a fumble and we recover, you want guys to come back to the huddle and say, 'Hey, you know what guys, my fault. I'll get the next one.'

"When you get that, it reassures confidence in everyone else. I'm not here yelling at everyone. My job is to provide confidence. I tell guys I'm coming right back to them, and I need them."

That attitude is appreciated by the other members of the huddle. So many things can, and often do, go wrong in a football game. And while each mistake may seem magnified to those in the stands, it must be forgotten on the field. There's no time for long memories. If a player holds onto a play for too long, it will affect him, and the team, for plays, even series.

So McNabb has to be part leader, part cheerleader in the huddle. His teammates have gotten used to him being loose, acting as if the team is up by three touchdowns, even if the score is tied with two minutes to go.

"That's the thing," Runyan said. "If you can get the feeling of you're up 21, you're going to play a lot better. When you start thinking about stuff and worrying about stuff, that messes your game up and slows you down a little bit. It comes from experience, but you have to be able to be in that situation where this is no problem. We're just going to roll down the field and get where we have to get."

"He's the commander," wide receiver Reggie Brown said of McNabb. "He's the president of the group. He gets us in the positions we need to be in. He's real loose, and I like that about Donovan. He's not so uptight in the huddle. That affects everybody. When the person leading is relaxed and confident, then everyone else is going to feel that and try to display that same attribute that he has."

Of course, it was Mitchell who disrespected the commander after Super Bowl XXXIX, revealing that he had to take over for McNabb, who was intermittently sick down the stretch, and call a few plays himself. That revelation didn't go over well internally. A few months later, coach Andy Reid told Mitchell he needn't show up for a minicamp and then cut him. Mitchell hasn't played in a game since.

The lesson there? You don't disrespect the huddle. It is sacrosanct and inviolable, a momentary safe haven that inevitably disappears. What happens there stays there. It's not for you or for me. It's for the 11 men on the field. It is theirs.