Now, six years later, it is -- not every play, but enough of the time to have contributed to the Eagles’ 2-0 start. With the shotgun formation now a component of Andy Reid’s scheme, the Birds have the No. 3 offense in the NFC, the sixth best in football -- and more ways, it would follow, to take advantage of their many sets of good hands.

Surely, the addition of Terrell Owens seemed to make the Birds’ offense whole. But the added use of the shotgun just seems to have furnished that final flourish, the one so many have been anticipating for years.

OK ..so why now?

"Well, I think Hank (center Hank Fraley) is comfortable with it now, and I think Donovan is comfortable with it now," Reid said Wednesday, after practice at the NovaCare Complex. "There was a maturing process there. It wasn’t like Hank came from a college (Robert Morris) that worked on the shotgun, or had played that position. So we felt the working between the quarterback and the center was better."

Occasionally spotted at training camp, and even once or twice in a preseason game, the Eagles would flash the set, and then they began to use it more regularly this summer. Now, it is developing as a staple of the offense. In an impressive 27-16 victory over the Minnesota Vikings Monday, a game that was hyped as a confrontation of two of the NFC’s more lethal offenses, McNabb operated five times from the shotgun, twice resulting in 13-yard Brian Westbrook receptions.

In the opener, a 31-17 victory over the Giants, the Birds employed the shotgun on their first possession, one that included a 15-yard completion to Owens. Later, Freddie Mitchell caught a 22-yard pass from the shotgun set.

Interestingly, the Birds did not use the shotgun in the second half Monday, a hint, perhaps, that it is a developing strategy. But as for the one entrusted to make it work, he is growing comfortable with the concept.

"It’s tough to say," McNabb said. "We don’t do it as much. Just being under the center, you get a chance to see things and get the ball out quick if you have to. In the shotgun, you are protected a little bit differently so that if you catch the ball, you know you’re hot. You’re able to get it to your receiver as soon as you get it. In the shotgun, you’re seeing the whole field. You’re seeing everything that’s developing. You’re able to buy a little time because you’re back a little further to go through your reads and possibly get to No. 4 on your progression, if you have time."

The shotgun offense begins with the quarterback several yards behind the center. The risk is in the lengthier snap and the greater likelihood of it being mishandled. An advantage, though, is in the immediate added distance between the quarterback and the pass-rushers.

Last season, McNabb was sacked 39 times, and another eight times in the postseason. That he has been sacked just four times -- that would project to 32 over 16 games -- this season is not necessarily a direct result of the occasional shotgun set, though it would be a logical benefit.

"You can eliminate some of these crazy blitzes and fire zones," Reid said. "And you block a little different. Obviously, it makes your ‘A’ gap a little more secure."

That was the idea all along, a fantasy that, like so much already for the Eagles of 2004, just took a while to arrive.

"It’s just a mix," McNabb said, "something to throw them off a little bit when they see me in the shotgun. They don’t know what’s coming. It could be a run, a draw or a pass. So it keeps them on their heels."