Wild Card Sunday Recap: Bills outlast Jaguars, 49ers take down Eagles, Patriots stifle Chargers
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 69 minutes
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Summary
Wild Card Saturday was one of the most exciting days of the season to date, and Wild Card Sunday proved to be a worthy encore. Here's a stat...Hunter Henry's fourth-quarter touchdown in the Patriots win over the Chargers marked the first time all day that any team had a multi-score lead. We went 170+ minutes of football with three games being played in a one-score window. That's a heck of a day. And it ended with the Bills, 49ers and Patriots advancing to the Divisional Round, and the Jaguars, Eagles and Chargers turning the page to the offseason. Robert Mays, Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman recap the busy day on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
4:30 Patriots beat Chargers, 16-3
28:59 49ers beat Eagles, 23-19
54:18 Bills beat Jaguars, 27-24
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
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Follow Dave on X: @davehelman_
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Another fantastic day of NFL football on |
| 0:10.1 | Wild Card weekend. We dug into all three games today, kick things off with the Patriots |
| 0:15.7 | Chargers game. A big win for the New England Patriots, a huge performance from their defense. |
| 0:20.2 | It's incredibly impressive. I mean, they outplayed the Chargers offense in every conceivable |
| 0:24.2 | way in this game. Start off with that when that went in reverse chronological order, |
| 0:28.8 | dug into the Eagles, Niners game after that. Talk about impressive performances. The Niners doing |
| 0:34.4 | what they did, just completely outmanned, especially on defense against that Eagles team. |
| 0:38.9 | And you lose George Kittle in the middle of this game. |
| 0:41.3 | And so for the Niners to just continue to impress in what Kyle Shanahan and that entire staff have done with this group, |
| 0:48.5 | another amazing effort from them to keep things going and head to Seattle next week in the divisional round. |
| 0:54.7 | And then we finish things off with what a performance by the Buffalo Bills against the Jacksonville |
| 0:59.5 | Jaguars. I said it on the show, firmly believe it. This is the version of the bills that felt |
| 1:04.5 | dangerous heading into the playoffs. So you can get your defense to create four or five high leverage mistakes, high leverage wins for you, |
| 1:13.6 | combined with what Josh Allen can be in any given game. |
| 1:16.5 | This was a good Jacks team that the bills beat today. |
| 1:19.2 | And I think a very impressive performance by their quarterback and from a defense that |
| 1:25.0 | I think in a lot of ways is Taylor made to be a playoff defense. |
| 1:29.0 | So let's get to all of those games with me, Dave Hellman, and Derek Klesson right now. |
| 1:39.4 | I think Dave said it best right before we started recording and felt like we were on a 36-hour, like, |
| 1:45.2 | 24-hour football high after the first four games that we got to watch this weekend. And in some ways, |
| 1:52.6 | it felt like Patriots Chargers was the come down. Roger Goodell was taking a perfect game into the |
| 1:57.8 | eighth. And somebody said the wrong thing to him, you know, in the dugout. |
... |
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