Nick Foles was not his best but he is a NFC East Division Champion. Photo by Andy Lewis Contrastphotography.com

The improbable happened. The Eagles, a team many thought was a rag-tag bunch with a few good players such as LeSean McCoy and DeSean Jackson.

They were going have a bad defense and a rookie head coach in Chip Kelly who had never coached a down of NFL football at any level before he took the reigns as head coach of the Eagles last spring.

Today the Eagles are NFC East Champs after knocking off the Dallas Cowboys 24-22 and are hosting a playoff game Saturday night January 4 at 8 p.m.

Nick Foles and the Eagles completed a worst-to-first turnaround under Kelly.

The Dallas Cowboys are stuck in second place and going home early again.

Foles did not play well but threw two touchdown passes, NFL rushing champion LeSean McCoy had 131 yards on 27 carries and a receiving score.

The Cowboys (8-8), with Kyle Orton filling in two days after Romo had back surgery, lost to a division rival with a playoff berth on the line for the third straight year.

Dallas trailed 24-16 when Orton threw a 32-yard touchdown pass to Dez Bryant. Orton went back to Bryant for the 2-point conversion, but Cary Williams dove to punch the ball away.

The Cowboys got another chance with a stop from the league’s worst defense, but Orton’s pass was intercepted by Brandon Boykin on the first play to seal the win.

”We kept fighting. We believed in each other,” said Foles, who was 17 of 26 for 263 yards after throwing for only 80 in a 17-3 loss to Dallas at home. ”When the offense was struggling, the defense picked us up.”

McCoy finished with 1,607 yards and became the first Philadelphia running back to win the rushing title since Hall of Famer Steve Van Buren in 1949.

”For all the accolades and the stats, if we didn’t win today, none of that means nothing,” McCoy said.

Their coach reflected on the his first journey as an NFL head coach.

“They are a special group,” Kelly said in his post game press conference. “I can’t tell you how they’ve made this transition from the college to the pros…it was all we asked. Everything we asked them to do as a staff on April 1st^t until tonight, they’ve bought in. It’s an awesome feeling when you can work as hard as they’ve worked and to see it pay off and the results are you’re 10-6 and Division Champs.”

The Cowboys were down 10-0 early in the second quarter and never led, but still found a way to make it interesting without Romo and standout linebacker Sean Lee, who was out with a sprained neck against the NFL’s No. 2 offense.

Regardless, Dallas has finished 8-8 in all three of coach Jason Garrett’s full seasons, and is 136-136 since the start of 1997. The Cowboys are only the third team in NFL history to have three straight 8-8 records.

”You feel a tremendous sense of pride about how the team played, how they fought, how they scratched, how they clawed, how they battled,” Garrett said. ”But having said that, we didn’t get the job done.”

Orton, was 30 of 46 for 358 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions in his first start in two years.

The Eagles won the division for the first time since 2010 a year after going 4-12, which led to Andy Reid’s departure and the hiring of Kelly and his fast-paced offense from Oregon.

Here is the schedule for the playoffs starting next weekend.

The NFL has announced the dates and times for this weekend’s wild card games. The NFL postseason will kickoff in Indianapolis on Saturday with the AFC South champion Colts hosting the fifth-seeded Kansas City Chiefs.

Peyton Manning and the Broncos will be the last playoff team in action this postseason. After taking Wild Card Weekend off, the Broncos will open postseason play in Denver at 4:40 p.m. ET on Sunday, Jan. 12 in a game that will be televised on CBS.

Here’s the complete wild-card schedule:

Saturday, Jan. 4

No. 5 Kansas City at No. 4 Indianapolis, 4:35 p.m. ET (NBC)

Regular season result: Colts 23, Chiefs 7 at Kansas City in Week 16.

No. 6 New Orleans at No. 3 Philadelphia, 8 p.m. ET (NBC)

Regular season result: N/A

Sunday, Jan. 5

No. 6 San Diego at No. 3 Cincinnati, 1:05 p.m. ET (CBS)

Regular season result: Bengals 17, Chargers 10 at San Diego in Week 13.

No. 5 San Francisco at No. 4 Green Bay, 4:30 p.m. ET (Fox)

Regular season result: 49ers 34, Packers 28 at San Francisco in Week 1.

Divisional Round Schedule

Saturday, Jan. 11

Green Bay/San Francisco/New Orleans at No. 1 Seattle, 4:35 p.m. ET (Fox)

Kansas City/Indianapolis/Cincinnati at No. 2 New England, 8:15 p.m. ET (CBS)

Sunday, Jan. 12

Philadelphia/Green Bay/San Francisco at No. 2 Carolina, 1:05 p.m. ET (Fox)

San Diego/Indianapolis/Kansas City at No. 1 Denver, 4:40 p.m. ET (CBS)