Mike Celizic

This is for all you people who write e-mails asking, “Why don’t you write more positive stories?” It’s about the feel-good story of 2006, the story of the Philadelphia Eagles.

They’re in the playoffs, and with one more win, they take the NFC East to boot. Don’t tell me you saw this coming two months ago, or even one month ago, because the only thing that was coming at the Eagles then was another lost season.

On October 29, they were 4-4 and riding a three-game losing streak. After a bye week, they beat the Redskins then, on Nov. 19, lost the game to the Titans and their quarterback, Donovan McNabb, to a shredded knee. Another week brought another loss — their fifth in six weeks — and a record of 5-6. That was one month ago, on Nov. 26, and you may remember reading at the time that the Eagles were done, finished, kaput, dead, deceased.

There wasn’t any reason to argue that conclusion. Jeff Garcia, a former All Pro quarterback from San Francisco, had most recently failed in Cleveland and was now in charge of the Eagles’ non-existent hopes of making the playoffs. Ahead were games against teams that were going places — the Panthers, Giants and Cowboys. In Philadelphia, folks were putting their Eagles’ jerseys in the closet and turning out the lights; this party was over.

It wasn’t that hard to do, given the history of a city in which athletic disappointment is as much a part of the landscape as cheesesteaks. The Eagles were in the Super Bowl two years ago, but of the four professional teams in the city — Eagles, Sixers, Flyers and Phillies — not one has won a championship since 1983; no wonder the fans there are so famously foul-tempered.

The Eagles have been through five years that had ended too early. They got to the NFC Championship game three straight years, only to lose every time. When they finally got to the Super Bowl, it ended in a shattering loss to the Patriots that was followed by the great T.O. controversy that, along with a sport hernia suffered by McNabb, turned the 2005 season into a disaster.

This year was supposed to be better, but injuries hammered the team before the season started, and when McNabb went down again, it looked like another lost season.

But now, after dismantling Dallas, 23-7, on Christmas Day, the Eagles are not just in the playoffs, but one win away from winning the division. Although nothing can be taken for granted in the NFL this year — the Eagles are Exhibit A — an Eagles win over the Falcons on Sunday is looking like a pretty good bet.

Win or lose doesn’t matter that much; the object is to get in the playoffs, and the Eagles are there. And in a year in which we’ve talked incessantly about the teams that have failed to live up to expectations — the Giants, Steelers, Panthers, Seahawks and even the Colts — it’s time to talk about the one that’s gone way beyond what anyone had any reason to even fantasize about.

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Give Garcia all the credit. He’s played like the all-star he was in San Francisco when that team was good and Terrell Owens was the big-time receiver. On Christmas, T.O., who has thoroughly trashed Garcia since, was on the other side of the ball, distinguishing himself by dropping as many passes as he could for the Cowboys while Garcia was throwing for 238 yards and a touchdown and running for 43 more yards.

In six games, Garcia has thrown nine touchdowns and one interception, giving him a quarterback rating of 96.3 — just a smidgen under his career high of 97.6 set in 2000. He hasn’t been just a fill-in, he’s been the winner he once was, or, as he could probably tell you, the winner he’s always felt he’s been.

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The best thing about all of this is that once the playoffs roll around, you can’t count anybody out. The NFC is as uniformly mediocre a division as the game has ever seen. The Bears would seem to be the class of the NFC, but with one game remaining, they’re embroiled in a quarterback controversy. The rest of the pretenders are all flawed, but what else would you expect in a division in which an 8-8 team is likely to make the playoffs?

Unlike during their four straight trips to the NFC Championship game, the Eagles aren’t battling expectations now. They’ve already gone way beyond what anybody other than the team itself hoped for. From now on, everything is a bonus.

A month ago, the playoffs seemed impossible, now, another trip to the Super Bowl doesn’t seem far-fetched at all.

It’s a story we keep hoping for and so rarely see, a story of a team that refused to give up on itself when everyone else had written it off. And it’s a story that can’t have a bad ending. From now on, everything the Eagles do is just icing on the cake.

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