Print edition: 
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. —Most of Brian Dawkins' Denver Broncos teammates encountered his corner locker before meeting him. What they saw there must have been confusing.
A wooden cross, a Bible, several religious books, and an etched plaque proclaiming, "I Know He's Watching Over Me," shared space with miniatures of Wolverine, the fearsome comic-book superhero whose fingers are gleaming daggers and whose milieu is mayhem.
If that contradictory display initially puzzled them, Denver's players quickly came to understand that it symbolized Dawkins himself, a jumbled mix of faith and ferocity, restraint and rowdiness, the spiritual and the intensely spirited.
"I tell the guys he thinks he's Wolverine," said running back Correll Buckhalter, Dawkins' teammate now and, for eight years, in Philadelphia. "But what's really inside him is the Holy Spirit."
Today, 10 months after his painful departure from Philadelphia, Dawkins will return for a conflicted reunion at Lincoln Financial Field when his Broncos meet the Eagles. His day, as always, will be filled with prayer and passion, though perhaps, given the circumstances, a little heavier dose of each.
Not surprisingly, in less than a season in Denver, Dawkins has become a leader, perhaps "the" leader.
When the Broncos followed a 6-0 start with four straight defeats, it was Dawkins who called a meeting before the Thanksgiving night win over the New York Giants and did most of the talking. And, according to Buckhalter, it wasn't the first — or second — time he'd done that this season.
"Anybody can call a team meeting," linebacker Andra Davis said. "But when certain people are talking, you respect them more. You have a different way of listening. You know that everything Dawk said he meant in a good way, that it was going to benefit us all."
It didn't take the '09 Broncos long to witness his example — and soon to emulate it. To a large extent, the team has assumed both sides of Dawkins' personality.
"He's a hard guy not to admire and emulate," defensive coordinator Mike Nolan said.
Dawkins professes his religious beliefs frequently and fervently, and some say the team's many evangelical Christians are now more openly expressive of their faith than in the past.
On the other side of his nature, several Broncos also join Dawkins in his familiar pregame histrionics, in which he whips himself into such an emotional froth that it seems he might shatter into a million little shards of fury.
"I've never seen a guy go through such a metamorphosis," backup quarterback Chris Simms said. "He goes from leader of the choir to psycho safety."
That penchant for emotional displays helps explain why Dawkins, 36, privately has been uneasy about this weekend's return to Philadelphia.
For a man who left Philadelphia in tears and who — in the eyes of the city's most ardent fans, anyway — was callously cast aside, this clearly will not be any given Sunday.
"Every time I gave up a play, people would say it was because of my age," Dawkins said. "No matter what the reason was, if I didn't make a play, it was because of my age."
