"This could have been easier, definitely.

Michael Vick took a whole bunch of hits and seemed to get rocked into some bad decisions, throwing a pair of picks for the first time since he joined the Eagles. Middle linebacker Stewart Bradley went down with an injury that could be devastating to the Birds' postseason dreams; Eagles coach Andy Reid said Bradley is unlikely to play again in the regular season. DeSean Jackson limped around the locker room on an injured right foot.

But Vick, as has been the case more than once lately, hung in there and brought the Birds back from a blown second-half lead to beat the Dallas Cowboys, 30-27, making them 9-4 this morning. Their best available playoff scenario - win the NFC East and you don't have to worry about being the 10-6 team that maybe misses the playoffs in the NFC - remains intact, with a visit to the Giants next week on tap, assuming the New Yorkers find their way back out of blizzard country by then.

The rest of this stuff, they'll just have to figure out as they go along.

Jackson and LeSean McCoy wiped out all the things that weren't so great last night. Jackson caught four passes for 210 yards and the 91-yard TD that turned the game around, his total the third-highest in franchise history. McCoy ran 16 times for a career-high 149 yards, blowing past defenders as the Birds churned out first downs late, keeping the Cowboys from a final shot at a porous Eagles D.

Reid noted that the Birds "played good, physical football down the stretch there" as they wrote a new page of their short history at the new Cowboys Stadium, where they were outscored 58-14 in a pair of losses last season. He seemed to make a point of not heaping praise on Jackson until he was specifically asked.

"I liked the 91," Reid offered, when asked about Jackson's touchdown and his subsequent celebration penalty. "The fall, I wish he wouldn't have – he goofed. That's a little bit of the Hollywood left in him."

Reid credited his team for "pushing through and making plays."

The Eagles started super-fast, 60 yards from Vick after a naked bootleg to Jackson on the first snap, the key play of a six-play, 73-yard touchdown drive that ended with Vick's seventh rushing touchdown of the season, a 1-yarder. It brought to mind the start of the Eagles-Redskins game Nov. 15, except that the Cowboys aren't the Redskins, as they quickly showed.

Ten plays, 77 yards, the final yard on a pass from Jon Kitna to Jason Witten that was made easier by Ernie Sims' inability to hit Witten at the line. The key play, though, came on third and 6 from the Dallas 45. Kitna threw a pass that was dropped by Roy Williams, setting up a punt, but Dimitri Patterson had grabbed Kevin Ogletree's facemask away from the play, and the drive stayed alive. The third-down stop that isn't a stop has become a specialty of this defense lately."