What happened before the Eagles unfurled a 23-point fourth quarter and danced into their bye week with a 40-26 win over the extremely accommodating San Francisco 49ers, well, that wasn't so much like the good, old days, or like the way we prefer to remember the good, old days, anyway.

In truth, there were moments during those five successive years the Birds went to the playoffs earlier this decade when seasons hung in the balance, when blunders threatened to derail everything, when points were gift-wrapped for the opposition, more or less the way they were yesterday. Kicker David Akers, who was at the center of lots of the good things and the bad things that happened, invoked 2003. That was when Brian Westbrook's punt-return touchdown beat the Giants at the end of a miserable day, saving a season that eventually ended in the NFC Championship Game.

Finding a way to win has a way of softening sharp edges. Finding a way to win might really have been the biggest difference between those Eagles and the 2008 bunch, at least until the fourth-quarter shadows lengthened in Candlestick Park and the Birds rallied to save their season.

"The last few weeks we found ways to lose,'' said Correll Buckhalter, who played the game of his life filling in for injured Brian Westbrook, 93 rushing yards on 18 carries and seven catches for 85 yards, including a pair of huge screens on the drive for a field goal that finally put the visitors ahead for good. "Today, we found a way to win.''

We won't know for quite a while whether they saved their season for good or just for a few weeks, but make no mistake, they saved it. They are 3-3 with a week off to heal before hosting the Falcons, and Andy Reid is 9-0 the week following the bye. The Redskins and the Cowboys both lost yesterday, so the NFC East isn't running away from the Eagles just yet. It still might, but it hasn't yet; no coaches, quarterbacks or even kickers will be replaced down at NovaCare this week.

After Reid extolled his team's resilience, someone asked how happy he was with the overall afternoon, which saw the Birds blow a 17-6 lead into a 26-17 deficit to a now-2-4 team that had trouble lining up right all day; the 49ers were whistled for an even 10 penalties. San Francisco running back Frank Gore rolled for 101 yards on just 19 carries, and yet another tight end, Vernon Davis this time, led his team's receivers, with six catches for 75 yards.

"Well, listen now," Reid said. "Do we want to get some things better? Absolutely. We'll work on that as we go. I think you've seen how this league is. You look around this league and there's crazy games happening all over the place. You have to enjoy every one of them, and you have to expect a dogfight every week.''

Reid said he could sense the tide turning late in the third quarter, but none of his players could highlight a moment or a play that turned it.

"It was a long day at the office, but we kept on fighting. It feels great,'' Buckhalter said.

"We didn't lose our confidence at any point today. We wanted to make things happen in the third quarter, but really, we couldn't . . . In the fourth quarter, things fell into place for us,'' said McNabb, who completed 23 of 36 passes for 280 yards, a pair of touchdowns and an interception that tight end L.J. Smith gift-wrapped.

McNabb, who took over the franchise lead in passing attempts and yards from Ron Jaworski, might have staked his continued tenure on the players' meeting he called last Monday, after the Birds blew a 14-0 lead into a 23-17 loss to the Redskins, the week after giving away a 24-20 game to the Bears.

"I tried to relay the message all week, and I obviously tried to do that on the sideline, tried to motivate the guys - 'We're not losing this game; we're going to win this game, and we're going to make sure we do it together,' " McNabb said.

The Eagles unraveled late in the first half. They let the 49ers drive for a 53-yard field goal with 29 seconds left that cut a 17-6 lead to 17-9. That wasn't a disaster. With all three timeouts left, the Eagles decided to try to get into position for such an attempt themselves. For once, they managed the clock perfectly. On their final offensive snap, McNabb shrugged off a sack and flipped the ball to Buckhalter, who lunged to the San Francisco 36 and went down. Timeout, 1 second left. Akers was left with a 54-yard attempt.

It seemed like a perfect spot for the best kicker in franchise history to get a little confidence back, having missed nine in a row from 45 yards or farther. There wasn't much pressure - if he missed, the Eagles still had a nice lead, and it was a really long try.

But disaster seems to strike this team from unexpected angles. Defensive end Ray McDonald came up the middle unblocked, as a result of a stunt that totally messed up the Eagles' blocking. The ball had barely left Akers' foot when it thudded off McDonald.

Akers said his head was down, but he heard one of the worst sounds he knows - along with the sound of the crowd reacting to a miss, there is the dreaded "double-thunk,'' he said, when you kick the ball and it bounces off someone.

Former Eagles defensive back Donald Strickland picked it up on the bounce and ran it in for a 41-yard TD, with no one ever getting a shot at tackling him. The half was over, the lead was down to a point, and a team that hadn't responded well to adversity all season had just been sucker-punched.

"Things like that happen,'' McNabb reflected later. "You just hope they never happen to you.''

Before all that, this was shaping up as the restorative win the Birds needed to get their season back on track. Their offense clicked on back-to-back, first-half touchdown drives, with Buckhalter humming along and rookie DeSean Jackson making plays again, in the absence of Reggie Brown.

But after the gift field-goal block TD, the defense opened the second half curled in a fetal position. The 49ers rolled 78 yards in just six plays for a go-ahead touchdown. When Gore galloped 6 yards for the score, it was San Francisco's first rushing touchdown in 10 quarters.

Another Joe Nedney field goal and it was 26-17, 20 points in a row for the bedraggled 49ers, the Eagles sagging on the ropes. Things looked especially bleak when a promising drive ended with a pick by another former Bird, Takeo Spikes, at the 49ers' 12. It seemed to be a terrible McNabb throw, until you saw the replay, and how Smith shied away from bumping into the linebacker instead of establishing position and completing his route. Smith pretty much stood aside for the pick, by a guy who couldn't hold on to an interception to save his life last year, as an Eagle.

But on the next series, after a short 49ers punt, Smith redeemed himself by digging out a low McNabb TD throw on third-and-1 from the 2, two plays after he resembled a rag doll getting thrown aside on a running play. The deficit was one.

The Eagles then drove for a 38-yard field goal that put them ahead for good and survived a review challenge - though technically, since it went over the right upright, it was not subject to review.

Then Quintin Mikell ran back a J.T. O'Sullivan pick 41 yards, to the 49ers' 7, and another Akers field goal opened a four-point lead. Then Trent Cole ripped the ball out of O'Sullivan's passing hand, Chris Clemons recovered it, and Akers made it a seven-point lead with just 1:10 left.

Still, though, O'Sullivan hit Josh Morgan for 25 yards and the ball was at midfield with 48 seconds left. Disaster remained a possibility. Then Parker recognized a route the Birds had been burned on before and jumped it, and O'Sullivan's pass for Arnaz Battle came back all the way, 55 yards for a touchdown that set the final score.

"I was real tired after that,'' noted Parker, who had never before returned a pick for a TD. "If we wanted to turn our season around, we had to go out and be aggressive. That was what we did in the fourth quarter . . . We played Eagle football, man, and we made things happen . . . We told ourselves we had to play 15 hard minutes of ball, and that's what we did.''

Playing 60 minutes that way will have to wait, at least for a few weeks. But the Eagles made that goal seem a little less remote. *