Who Brings the Spark?

While watching the 49ers play the Cardinals last night, I was struck by just how excited everyone looked out there.  Even in a game that set offensive football back at least a couple years, guys were jumping around, woofing to their teammates and bouncing around like there was no place on Earth they'd rather be.

Kind of a contrast to the Eagles.

It's not that I mind a team of solid professionals doing their jobs without a bunch of showboating.  One of the things I like most about college football is that coaches can still chew out players for antics a lot less inane that that stupid sports coat stunt that Tony Kornheiser couldn't stop talking about last night. 

But maybe this is another factor to be considered in the whole window of opportunity debate.  It takes a certain reckless disregard for one's own personal safety to play full out on a football field.  As we saw this weekend, sometimes there can be disastrous results.  One way to assure this sort of passion is to stock a team with a bunch of young, hungry gamers.  Another is to be lucky enough to have a guy who can inspire the rest of his unit.  I'm not a fan of Ray Lewis, but he does seem to have an effect on his teammates.

Do the Eagles -- who are decidedly not in the same position as San Francisco or Arizona, thankfully -- have one of those guys?  In other words, who brings the spark?

Jeff Garcia is not the quarterback Donovan McNabb is.  However, it seems clear that he brought a certain something onto the field last year that got his guys going.  You can say that the offense wasn't as good without McNabb -- it wasn't -- and that "leadership" is an overrated concept -- it isn't --- but the results last year pretty much speak for themselves. 

It's not time to panic.  One self-inflicted loss means nothing.  We know this team is going to be good this year.  But lots of teams are going to be good this year, and what will matter in the end will be the marginal factors that put one team over the top.  That's why it's important to try to figure out what those things are and how the Eagles stack up. 

I thought, going into this season, that the Eagles' biggest motivation was going to come from the threat of imminent football mortality.  Guys like Dawkins, Kearse and even McNabb know their careers aren't going to last forever and they may only get a couple more shots. 

Maybe that's the spark.  Would be nice to see some evidence of it next week, though.