Some great interviews here with some of your favorite unsung heroes:

Wade Phillips and his Dallas Cowboys woke to a week of holiday hope. With Tampa Bay and Philadelphia both losing their games over the weekend, Dallas has a clear opportunity to squeak into the playoffs. The road leads through Philly, and an absolute must-win season finale.

The Eagles have a candle of hope, but theirs is a much more unlikely scenario. Not only does McNabb have to defeat Dallas, but every team ahead of them must lose as well. It’s a much less likely scenario. I’ll be interested to see which team comes out more motivated this coming Sunday.

Will Dallas, needing only to win, come out of the gate more motivated, or will the Eagles, facing greater odds, push through the uncertainty and hammer down on the Cows?

We’ll be paying special attention to interviews and comments from Jerry on down to Wade, Tony, and TO this week. What’s going to be the Cowboy’s attitude this time around? Are they foolishly overconfident? Humbly motivated? Or some other bizarre combination?

Dallas needs to dig deep and find whatever that was they showed us in The Meadowlands a couple weeks back. Bring back THAT team. Let’s wipe our slates clean of Baltimore and the humiliating embarrassment that was the last game in Texas Stadium.

This is crunch time like no other. Deserve it or not, Romo will earn the label of playoff failure if he doesn’t pull out a December miracle. Of course, we’re just talking about getting to the playoffs. He’ll still have to win at least one game (probably two) to ultimately avoid the lable. Three seasons in a row of playoff failure is unacceptable to Dallas fans and ownership.

You can be sure that SOMETHING will change if we don’t see some wins.

As of this very moment, San Diego leads Tampa Bay 41-24 in the 4th quarter. Should Tampa Bay lose, which appears likely, Dallas has a chance.

No matter what, Dallas has to pummel Philadelphia next week. That is a given. But in addition to the win, at least Tampa or Atlanta has to lose a game, possibly two.

The “experts” aren’t so experty, and we’re still waiting to hear what exact scenario has to go down for Dallas to take the wildcard. Philadelphia and Chicago also look to be possibilities, though Chicago may need every other team to lose twice, which isn’t going to happen.

Stay tuned. We’ll update you with the latest as we hear it.

It’s anyone’s guess whether the Dallas Mavericks will enter tonight’s game prepared to face the team with the second best record in the Western Conference. New Orleans has had an extraordinary season, hopefully not like the extraordinary season the Mavericks enjoyed last year which ended in first round failure.

If the Mavs win, they could face New Orleans in said first round. If they lose, they may face the Lakers. Either team poses unique challenges that the Mavs are ill equipped to face.

All in all, the combo of Gasol and Kobe pose the greater threat. Dallas did not perform well enough against L.A. this season, so the mental edge would definitely go to the Lakers. Guess it’s a good thing Kobe didn’t get his way last summer, eh?

New Orleans will run the Mavs into the ground, much like the Warriors did last year. But there’s a chance that Jason Kidd brings enough leadership and ball control to handle this young and energetic team.

There’s no such thing as an easy matchup this year. Dirk and Kidd will have to lead the Mavs one game at a time through a grinding schedule of top level playoff contenders to make it back to the Finals. As a matter of fact, let’s not even talk Finals. Let’s talk Round One wins and leave it at that for now.

Let’s see if we can get any juice out of Jason Terry and Brandon Bass, the two most important contributors after the obvious Dirk, Josh, and Jason. Make no mistake. Every player has to show up tonight. Tonight’s game is too important.

Tipoff is at 6pm CST tonight.