Tuesday belongs to the Eagles' players

It is their lone day of rest, that one day during the week when business is shelved, when there are no meetings, no practices, no formal scheduled activities. For the men who don the shoulder pads and helmets, Tuesdays on the NFL calendar are Sundays to everyone else, the time to get on the floor and play with the kids, or to chill, or to play Guitar Hero.

No football. Or at the very least, not too much.

In a sport that requires men to channel every ounce of energy and morph into the modern-day equivalent of gladiators, Tuesday during the season is the day to try to revert to a normal human, one who isn't about brute force or nastiness or excessive aggression. One who is a father, a husband, a son, or just a guy.

There's still work to be done on Tuesday, tape to watch or weights to lift or treatments to get - or, in the case of Donovan McNabb, a game plan faxed over from the boss to review. But most of it can be done from the comfort of home and without an alarm clock blasting at 6 o'clock in the morning to wake you from the dead.

Tuesday is salvation. Tuesday is calm and clutter-free. Tuesday is sleep. Tuesday is the break that every player must have to survive.

"Tuesday is horrible," Brian Dawkins said. "I feel absolutely crummy."

OK, so there's that.

Rob Palumbo, a sports medicine physician in Allentown who recently started working with retired NFL players, likened the contact that players absorb during football games to a car crash. For the players at positions where full-speed contact is a necessity - like Dawkins' spot at free safety - a game can be like a series of 30-m.p.h. collisions.

"To say any guy gets out unscathed," Palumbo said, "it just doesn't happen."

So for those still playing this violent game, Tuesday also is about recuperation and repair. Dawkins hauls his damaged carcass into a hyperbaric chamber that sits in what used to be his dining room and, as he says, racks out. He also plays with his kids, who he says are aware that dad is wiped out and will have mercy and not try to engage him in a wrestling match.

If the Eagles' opponent the weekend before was Washington or Pittsburgh or the Giants - teams that are exceptionally physical and predominantly run the ball - Dawkins will be even more banged up than usual.

"You know it's going to be a physical contest, so I know I'm going to be getting off the floor a lot slower playing with the kids," the 13th-year veteran said. "There's not going to be too much physical conduct in the household as far as playing with the kids or roughhousing, because I know I'm going to be beat up after those games. I know."

If Tuesday is a Sunday for the players, it's just a Tuesday for the coaches. Tuesday is work. Tuesday is planning, and tweaking, and planning some more. It's like rushing to meet a deadline that's closing quicker than that gas-guzzling SUV behind you on the Schuylkill Expressway. (Wait, that's me.)

For the Eagles' coaches, Monday night bleeds into Tuesday morning quickly. There are meetings and strategy sessions as the coaches try to pick apart the next opponent, try to find that one weakness and devise a way to exploit it. If Monday is exploratory surgery, Tuesday is the full knee reconstruction. The coaches have to get it right, otherwise the team won't hold together on Sunday. Sure, anything can happen on any given Sunday, but if Tuesday isn't a success from the coaches' perspectives, the team has no shot.

"Tuesday's an easy one," Andy Reid sarcastically quipped.

Tuesday is one of the longest days of the week for the coaches. Coffee is key. If the players are hyper-conscious about the effect every drop of liquid and every ounce of food has on their bodies, the coaches know something, too: Caffeine is your friend.

By the time the sun goes down, Reid has faxed McNabb a copy of the game plan from a machine in his office, so McNabb can get a jump on the work that will take place Wednesday.

"He'll have a chance to review it, because a lot of it is on his shoulders Wednesday [as to] how the offense goes," Reid said.

So Tuesday just might be a Tuesday for McNabb, too.

It blows by fast, the one day off during the week when players aren't required to be at work from eight in the morning until dinnertime. And then, before they know it, it's Wednesday.