"Trailing by 21 points in the fourth quarter, and then by 14, and then by seven, Michael Vick willed the Eagles down the field. There is no other way to say it. He masterminded the impossible yesterday with his legs and with his gumption. The New Meadowlands will be old and decrepit before it sees anything like it again.

And as he Twittered his way home down the turnpike, Vick wrote, "Whenever facing adversity never run from it run to it!!!"

An NFL team had not blown a 21-point lead at the half since the self-same Giants did it against Tennessee in 2006. The Eagles had not come back from a 21-point deficit at the half since they did it against the Redskins in 1946. The Eagles had never scored 28 points in the fourth quarter of a game, ever.

If it was DeSean Jackson who transformed improbable into impossible with his 65-yard punt return to win the game at the gun, it was Vick who showed the most miraculous mettle in the 38-31 win. In the final 7 minutes of the game, with his team desperate throughout, with the margin for error essentially evaporated, Vick ran the ball for 94 yards on four carries.

It is the only reason they were in a position to win. He gruesomely gutted the Giants and then he complained afterward that they didn't stay around to shake his hand.

"I have a lot of respect for the New York Giants," Vick said. "I just thought that for them to walk off the field at the end really didn't show good sportsmanship. But we still have the utmost respect for those guys. They were doing a lot of talking. We just wanted to come out and play a good football game."

Less than an hour earlier, the Eagles were dead and the division was lost. There were 8 minutes, 17 seconds remaining on the clock and a 31-10 deficit on the scoreboard. The Giants were going to win the NFC East and Andy Reid was going to have to spend a week answering questions about unmade replay challenges and Vick, well, you know how that conversation was going to go: that the accumulation of physical punishment had reached the tipping point."