"Must win? Did win.

A fourth-quarter drive in which the Eagles atoned for having made enough mistakes to fill Lake Michigan gave the Birds a 24-20 gut-check victory last night over the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field.

Rookie running back LeSean McCoy sliced through the Bears for a 10-yard touchdown, on the series after his fumble nearly put the game out of reach.

The biggest winner was quarterback Donovan McNabb, who last week called the Eagles' return to his hometown a "must win" for the now 6-4 team, which came in having lost two in a row. McNabb, constantly under siege, sacked three times, completed 23 of 32 passes - 72 percent - for 244 yards, a pair of touchdowns, one pick, and a 101.6 passer rating. He delivered a fourth-quarter comeback, for the first time this season, and delivered a four-point victory, for a team that had been 1-8-2 in games decided by seven points or fewer.

"I thought today, as a team, we pulled together," McNabb said. Coming back to win, he said, "provides confidence for the team, to know you can rely on the guy next to you."

Somehow the Birds overcame three turnovers and several badly timed penalties, finding a running game and some critical poise late in the evening, just when they seemed doomed to sink to .500 and long-shot playoff status. Maybe, killing the long afternoon in the Windy City, the Eagles noticed that the Giants and the Cowboys both won.

"We were able to come back from a fast start and a slow middle to finish strong and fast," Eagles coach Andy Reid said. "We hadn't had a lot of luck in the close ones. This time, the guys battled through, they really didn't worry about all that, they just kept bangin'. I was really proud of them for that."

They sealed the victory when linebacker Tracy White stuck a hand in front of a Jay Cutler pass to Greg Olsen and knocked it high in the air. Safety Sean Jones made a fine diving catch near midfield, with 45 seconds left.

The Birds' first drive featured Michael Vick's most successful play as an Eagle, a 34-yard quarterback draw on third-and-1. That's one way to attack the short-yardage running problem. The drive fizzled on back-to-back incompletions, after the Eagles achieved second-and-5 from the Bears' 7. David Akers then gave the Birds an early 3-0 lead with the 25-yard field goal.

The first defensive series featured a Jeremiah Trotter first-down cameo (and run stuff), making Trot technically the starting middle linebacker, though he sat for quite a spell after that in favor of Joe Mays. It was Mays who was way out of his gap in the second quarter, leading to a 72-yard run by Kahlil Bell, just up from the Chicago practice squad, by the way, a run that set up the Bears' second field goal. Akeem Jordan, please get well soon. Trot played most of the second half, the coaching staff apparently having seen enough of Mays."