They never fully dissipate, moments like these, not so much memories but ghosts of experience past, ethereal companions to those who knew them best in life. Jeff Garcia remembers the rain: how it felt as it spritzed onto his skin, how it sounded as it pattered upon his helmet. By the time David Akers trotted out from the sidelined and paced backward into ready position, the turf between the hash marks looked more like the outer track at Churchill Downs than Lincoln Financial Field.
“Just from a team standpoint, we had a confidence about ourselves by that point in the season,” Garcia remembers.