Russell Wilson and the Seahawks did what they needed to in order to advance to the NFC Divisional Round.

Earlier this season, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll told reporters that whenever Seattle has Russell Wilson on the field, the team has a chance to win, “no matter what’s going on.” 

And as it turned out in Seattle’s 17-9 Wild-Card weekend win over the Eagles on Sunday, Wilson was the game’s only starting quarterback that gave his team a legitimate chance to prevail. Philadelphia starter Carson Wentz entered the contest looking to star in his postseason debut, but after suffering a head injury with just 6:59 to go in the first quarter, the former No. 2 pick in the 2016 NFL draft was knocked out of the game entirely. 

In Wentz’s absence, 40-year-old backup Josh McCown took almost every snap for the Eagles, becoming the oldest QB ever to make a postseason debut. McCown completed 18 of his 24 pass attempts for 174 yards, but failed to get his team into the end zone. 

Instead, it was Wilson and the Seattle offense that was able to muster up enough production against Philadelphia’s defense. Wilson finished with 325 passing yards and one touchdown on 18 of 30 attempts, adding 45 yards on the ground. 

While Sunday’s win was far from his best postseason performance, Wilson’s unit did just enough and watched the team’s defense stifle an under-manned Eagles offense.

“I think more than anything else we believe,” Wilson told NBC’s Michelle Tafoya after the game. “There’s no doubt in us. We believe. We have everything that we want. Everything that we need.”

The Seahawks led 10-3 at halftime, snatching the lead after scoring a late touchdown on a five-yard run from the recently unretired Marshawn Lynch.  Coming out of the locker room, Philadelphia was able to chip away, nailing a 26-yard field goal. But the Seahawks quickly answered behind a 53-yard bomb from Wilson to rookie receiver D.K. Metcalf—the only touchdown of the second half. Metcalf, a second round pick from Ole Miss, would set a playoff record for most receiving yards by a rookie, finishing with 160 yards on seven catches.  

Philadelphia would add a third field goal with just under three minutes to go in the third quarter. And while its defense largely limited Wilson’s big-play ability, the Eagles attempted to summon some additional offense. Philadelphia’s 10-play, 64-yard drive midway through the fourth quarter resulted in a turnover-on-downs. And the team’s drive one series later, resulted in a similar result despite being in the red zone. 

For Eagles fans, Sunday’s Wild-Card weekend loss to Seattle might always feature an asterisk, a question about what could have been had Wentz been on the field. 

But no matter, Wilson and his Seahawks will march on. A date with Green Bay next weekend awaits. 

After nine-plus seasons, and an extremely extended divorce period, the Cowboys have finally announced that they are moving on from Garrett as head coach. Where does Jerry Jones go from here?

The Cowboys have informed Jason Garrett that they will be moving on from him at head coach, not extending his contract which is set to expire in a few days. Garrett had a 85-67 record during his nine-plus seasons in Dallas, with a 2-3 postseason record.

Since the end of the Cowboys’ season on Dec. 30, rumors have been flying about whether or not Garrett will be back as the head coach. The team finally made it official during the Eagles-Seahawks wild-card game—the game in which the Cowboys would have been playing if they had won the NFC East.

Coming into 2019, expectations were as high as they’ve been in a decade in Dallas, and the pressure was ratcheted up by a number of players carrying expiring contracts into the summer—Dak Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott, Amari Cooper and Garrett himself among them. The mandate was clear. The Joneses were hopeful their storied franchise would be back on a level it hasn’t reached in a quarter-century. And coming up short would mean change would come. Which it has. A mediocre NFC East kept hope for Garrett’s survival alive, but a bad Week 16 loss to a wounded Philadelphia team killed that hope.

Ultimately Garrett’s legacy will be one of how Jerry Jones’s great coaching experiment came up short—the owner let the then-backup quarterback into coaching meetings in the late 1990s to prepare him for his next career, hired him as offensive coordinator in 2007 before making him the interim head coach in ’10 and full-time in ’11.

More than anything, the next head coach needs to make this team better aligned and more resilient—things that really weren’t issues for Dallas until 2019. The Cowboys didn’t win a single game in which they trailed at the half, and they lacked identity on both sides of the ball. That cost Dallas in the win column, and ultimately Garrett his job.

When it comes to the Cowboys’ next head coach, Marvin Lewis and Mike McCarthy have already been interviewed. Also watch for the Joneses to look to the college ranks for Garrett’s replacement. The family has a relationship with, and a ton of respect for, Oklahoma coach/native Texan Lincoln Riley, and may make him say no to a job every kid who grows up with football in that state would covet. Baylor’s Matt Rhule and ex-Ohio State coach Urban Meyer would be other names on whom to keep close tabs.

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