Andy Reid

But truly, the feeling is incredible right now, isn't it? You have the buzz. The players have it. The coaches, in their own monotone way, have it as well.

It's the buzz of a team that knows how good it is, that knows it has something special going.

The swagger, ladies and gentlemen, is back. Full force. The Eagles believe, and that's a very powerful force in a league where the difference between winning and losing is so slim.

"We definitely feel that. There is something that you feel in that locker room right now, a confidence that we feel," said safety Brian Dawkins, who has helped spearhead the defensive revival. "When we touch the field defensively, we feel like that you're not going to score on us. I can't say we felt that way earlier in the season, but right now we feel like that you can't score on us.

"If we do what we're supposed to do defensively, you cannot score on us. That takes away from no team that we play, we definitely respect every team that we play, but as confidence-wise, that's what we feel like.

"Offensively, our offensive line, they're ... they're like killing people right now. They're doing something that people said they couldn't do. They're driving people. So Correll (Buckhalter) and (Brian) Westbrook, they just pick what hole they want to go in and run the ball.

"So I think that confidence right now that we're playing with at the right time of the year -- and I said this before: We're playing our best ball at the right time of the season."

Reid held his press conference on Tuesday and spoke of the "soul searching" everyone within the Eagles did after that loss to Indianapolis. It was a crossroads moment, an embarrassing time, and Reid responded by giving the players Monday through Wednesday off in preparation for the Panthers game the following Monday.

Three days off? A reward for losing so badly?

Brian Dawkins and Jeremiah Trotter celebrate the defense

And so now he's in his NovaCare Complex offense preparing for the Falcons, not caring a bit about the change the outside world has regarding the perception of his football team. Many -- and you know who you are -- wrote the Eagles off for this season and, yes, there were many who suggested Reid's better days as the Eagles head coach were behind him.

But Reid kept his hand steady and stressed to his team that he believed in them and that he understood the root of the problems.

In retrospect, the answers were so simple.

"We needed to be better at the fundamentals," he said on Tuesday after his press conference. "We needed to do the basics -- tackling, catching the football on both offense and defense, blocking. The fundamentals. That's what it came down to for this football team."

It couldn't have possibly been so easy. The Eagles are running the football more on offense, and they are, as Dawkins says, "killing" defenses with a big, powerful offensive line. The dropped passes have become fewer and fewer from one week to the next. Jeff Garcia (more on him later) has been masterful running the offense, providing an emotional spark, taking charge as the leader of the team.

Defensively, well, it's got to be more complicated. A group that was simply being battered in the run game -- at one point, the Eagles allowed four teams in six outings to rush for more than 200 yards -- has reversed the numbers. Now the Eagles dominate the line of scrimmage!

Go figure.

I can't. I'm not going to delve too deeply and search for answers, and I'm not going to play the quarterback game (What would have happened had Donovan McNabb not been injured?) and I'm not going to look for the magical elixir in each player's locker.

I'm just going to enjoy it.

And I'm going to understand that it's just the beginning. In truth, it feels like the season is just starting for this football team. They have a nothing-to-lose Falcons team coming to Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday. Atlanta leads the league in running the football. Michael Vick is capable of making a defense dizzy with is incredible ability. The defensive line in Atlanta can cause a lot of havoc.

The Falcons are going to play hard and they're going to play the role of the spoiler against a team they don't like much at all.

So it's a big game that awaits on Sunday. Reid is already on his soapbox.

"It's important that the guys understand it, and I know they do," he said. "We've made the playoffs and that's nice. That's an accomplishment. But we understand there is a lot more ahead of us. We're in position to accomplish something. We have to get in a good week of work and prepare to play a very good Atlanta team on Sunday."

The message is the same: Practice hard, study hard, be prepared and go out and win. Then, and only then, look one day ahead.

You know what I know, though. That elusive swagger, the confidence and the all-out sense of team very much is part of this team now. I've been around a late-season run before, many times under Reid. This one has that special feeling. This one is just beginning.

CLEANING OUT THE DALLAS NOTEBOOK

It is official: Brian Westbrook's season is one of the best ever by an Eagles running back. He has 1,214 rushing yards, has 76 catches (the franchise record for running backs is 81, set by Keith Byars in 1990) and has 1,884 yards from scrimmage (the franchise record is 2,006 by Wilbert Montgomery in 1979).

I watched David Akers kick in the pre-game warmups and, honestly, thought he struggled as much as at any time I've seen him before a game. The Cowboys fans were getting all over his case, too. And I wondered how Akers would kick in the game. Well, he was 3 for 3 on field goals and made his two PATs and, yeah I know, so much for pre-game warmups.

Somebody who knows had this to say during a lunch conversation on Tuesday: Shawn Andrews is as good an offensive lineman the Eagles have had since the days of Jerry Sisemore. That's saying something, isn't it?