Wentz's coaches and teammates will assure you that the quarterback's rapid ascension is no accident. It is born, they say, out of a willingness to slog. To study. To meticulously catalog those studies. To debate his coaches on the merits of those studies. Back at North Dakota State, where Wentz led the Bison to FCS national championships in 2014 and 2015, his coaches dissected the team's third downs on Tuesdays. In the meeting room, their discussions started promptly at 6 a.m. By 6:30, Tim Polasek, then the offensive coordinator in Fargo, would have multiple text messages. Wentz, first thing every Tuesday morning, plied his coach with third-down suggestions. Polasek would consider Wentz's offerings, then look at the board full of plays the staff had cooked up.

"Jeez," he'd say. "Let's erase that idea. This one's better."

As a pro, Wentz still engages in those debates. At home against Washington in late October, the Eagles installed a play at Wentz's behest that came straight from his old college playbook -- a two-tight-end package that culminated in a touchdown pass to running back Corey Clement. He even called NDSU to secure old film, evidence to convince the Eagles brass that the play could work. "The way I trust Carson right now is because of the way he studies and prepares," Eagles coach Doug Pederson says. "If he were just coming to me with out-of-the-blue ... just pulling things from the air, it would be a little different. But I know when he comes to me, it's well-thought-out."

Later that same Monday night against Washington, just five seconds into the fourth quarter, Wentz lined up in the shotgun on third-and-8. Six Redskins descended on Wentz's pocket, where he was swallowed whole and a sack felt inevitable. "Wentz will be ... escaping!" screamed Monday Night Football play-by-play man Sean McDonough. As Wentz fled from the pile of bodies that McDonough, Washington's rushers and all of Philadelphia thought had engulfed him, Eagles quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo, who had been planning for the next series, looked up from his call sheet. "All of a sudden I hear the crowd go crazy," he says. "And out he goes."

Wentz would scramble for 17 yards and a first down, just one more play in a growing stockpile that has delivered this team and its fans from a familiar feeling: disappointment. "Even if he wins a couple of Super Bowls along the way," Didinger says, "when people are just kicking back in some bar in Fishtown, talking about Carson Wentz, it won't take very long before somebody says, 'But you know what play I remember the best? That play against the Redskins.'"

Randall Cunningham is known around these parts as an Eagles legend, but when he talks about Wentz, he sounds more like the pastor he has become in his post-playing days. The young Eagles quarterback, he says, "is in a divine place at a divine time."

Therein lies the nagging twinge of trepidation in Philadelphia's Wentz-infused mania. These fans have felt sure they had the divine person in the divine place at the divine time before. Once upon a time, there was a second-year star who led the Eagles to unforeseen heights ahead of schedule. Who won the town over in the winds of a pretty magical season. Who dazzled them early on with visions of Super Bowls and trophies and parades down Broad Street.

His name was Donovan McNabb.

McNabb's legacy is so loaded, the totality of what he achieved -- and more crucially, failed to -- so all-consuming, that there are no trees, only forest. Why reminisce on his breakout second season, which saw him lead the 2000 Eagles to an unexpected playoff berth? His encore act was three straight losses in the NFC championship game. Why wax nostalgic on his 2004 Super Bowl run? He came up short and never got back, right?

In truth, he's one in a long parade of quarterbacks whose relationships with the city proved complicated at best. Ron Jaworski led the Eagles to their first Super Bowl appearance in 1980 and is an icon in the area now, but he was heckled relentlessly in his day. "I don't remember the exact year, but I think I started off against the Colts," he says. "I completed my first 11 passes. The 12th was incomplete and they booed." Cunningham was electric, but he won one playoff game in 11 years. Even Jeff Garcia, who wished the city a Merry Christmas after downing Dallas and became a folk hero for a spell, wasn't in town long enough to engender either disillusionment or idolatry.

Wentz seems like a guy that could be living in a row house in Kensington. - Sportswriter Ray Didinger

Among them, though, McNabb stands out as a singular lightning rod. He has been since the day in 1999 when Paul Tagliabue walked up to the mic and said, "With the second pick, the Philadelphia Eagles select Donovan McNabb, quarterback, Syracuse University." Before Tagliabue had even finished, a chorus of boos -- vociferous, arm-thrashing boos -- rained down. The Dirty 30, as that band of Eagles fans came to be known, had unknowingly, and permanently, shifted the city's relationship with the man who would become the best quarterback in team history. "I think Donovan took that personally and it bothered him," Jaworski says. "I think it still bothers him."

That the Dirty 30 was, in fact, an event orchestrated by a local radio personality, not truly an organic geyser of disgust, didn't prove to be a salve. Neither did the fans' later assertions that they weren't booing McNabb per se; they were booing the act of not picking reigning Heisman winner Ricky Williams. Nor did a slew of personal apologies from the Dirty 30's representatives -- to McNabb, to his parents, to the entire Eagles organization. Not even the quarterback's success -- his 92-49-1 record as an Eagles starter, five NFC title games, one Super Bowl -- could ever quite resolve the reality that Donovan McNabb and Philadelphia never really found peace with each other. "Every time I go back [to Philly], somebody will always mention, 'Hey, you never really liked the fans,'" he says. "And I'm like, 'Why would you think I didn't like the fans?'"

There's no easy answer for the dearth of misty gratitude toward McNabb. While Philadelphia has embraced Wentz for his blue-collar persona, it bristled at McNabb and his (understandable) unwillingness to move past those boos. And McNabb hasn't shied away from acknowledging any ugly forces at play. In 2013, when asked if race played a part in how he was perceived in his career, he didn't balk. "It's been a part," he told Philadelphia Magazine. "What percentage, I don't know. Do I care? No. But it's been a part." In the end, this seemed an unbreachable clash of personalities -- McNabb, to fans, was thin-skinned and distant; Philadelphians, from his perspective, were demanding and inhospitable.

Over the years, though, the frustration between McNabb and Eagles fans seems to have given way to mutual apathy. Outside Lincoln Financial Field before the Denver game in Week 9, there is a steady dose of nostalgia. Brian Dawkins jerseys abound. Reggie White. Harold Carmichael. There's just precious little McNabb-fueled wistfulness. Fans applaud him when he returns. They thank him for the wins and, yes, the memories. But they don't long for him, despite the clear gulf between his time at quarterback and his successors'. "I played for over a decade there and my winning percentage speaks for itself," McNabb says. "And then after I left, they thought Kevin Kolb was going to be the guy. Michael Vick went through his deal. Nick Foles. It was quarterback after quarterback after quarterback, but they weren't able to duplicate the things that we were doing consistently."

It is now Carson Wentz's turn to try to accomplish what McNabb never did. What none of his predecessors was able to do. It is his turn to try to win the Super Bowl, and to become -- and remain -- beloved in Philadelphia.