5 matchups the Eagles have to win against the Packers

We’ve watched the Philadelphia Eagles play 17 hours of football. We know what they’re capable of and we know what they need to do to win.

It felt like all of that was just a warm-up. Shutting down the Saints’ offense in Week 2? That doesn’t matter. Making the Bengals offense look like a JV team in Week 8? Not important. Dropping 37 points on the Rams in Week 12 just to fly across the country and shut down the Ravens in Baltimore the next week? Impressive, but whatever. 

Now it’s just the playoffs. It’s a single game against the Green Bay Packers, and the loser’s season is over.

The Eagles get a Week 1 rematch in the Wild Card round

It feels like the Week 1 game in Brazil was five years ago. In that game, the offense started the game just about as terribly as you could imagine. Hell, on Saquon’s first run as an Eagle, he slipped in the backfield for a five-yard loss.

We learned that that’s not what his team is. The Eagles play bull ball and they do it behind Saquon Barkley. If he crushes, there’s a really good chance that the Eagles win. I’m not going to talk about Saquon in these matchups because that’s plain and simple.

These are matchups that are a little different than what we saw in Week 1. Again, now that we know this team, we know who can win and how they can win.

Zack Baun and Nakobe Dean vs. Josh Jacobs

The Packers want to run the ball. They want to run the ball early, then they want to run the ball in the middle of the game, and then they want to run the ball late in the game. If the Eagles' defense allows them to, the Packers will control the clock and win an incredibly dumb, boring, and rage-inducing game.

It would be super cool if the defensive line could stop Josh Jacobs every play. Unfortunately, Josh is good and doesn’t let that happen. He has 737 yards after contact and averages 2.4 yards after contact per carry. That means he gets past the defensive line and it’s going to be on the Eagles linebackers to shut him down. 

Luckily, this is a strength-on-strength matchup. Next Gen Stats defines “Stops” as “Tackles that result in a successful play for the defense,” and the Eagles linebackers are elite at getting stops. Zack Baun has the second-most stops of any player in the NFL (88) and Nakobe Dean has the eighth-most (75). 

In Week 1, Jacobs had two big runs: one for 22 yards between the tackles and one for 32 yards outside of them. On both of those plays, Baun had a chance to make the play at the line of scrimmage. On one he whiffed on a tackle, and on the other, he couldn’t get off his block. 

Simply put: the fewer times Josh Jacobs has the ball in his hands, the better. He’s incredibly willing and able to break a big run. The Eagles will win this game if Josh Jacobs isn’t part of the Packers’ offense.

C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Reed Blankenship vs. Jordan Love

At the beginning of the season, the Packers quarterback Jordan Love was addicted to throwing interceptions. In Week 11, he threw his 11th interception; since then, he hasn’t thrown any. C.J.G.J. and Reed have 10 of the Eagles’ 13 interceptions. Those two are going to be responsible for making Jordan fall off the wagon.

After going back and watching those interceptions, something notable I saw was that three of Love’s interceptions were off of tips. Those kinds of picks are more of a ‘that guy was in the right place at the right time’ kind of play, rather than a ‘that guy just baited him into throwing that’ kind of play. 

The Eagles safeties are almost always in the right place at the right time and they’re also good at baiting quarterbacks, so those interceptions should be there. 

Jalen Hurts vs. Xavier McKinney

Just like Jordan Love, Jalen had a turnover problem at the beginning of the season, but he cleaned it up in a crazy way. Since Week 6, he’s only thrown one interception and it was the one in Dallas where Trevon Diggs made a really great play on a ball thrown to DeVonta Smith.

The problem here is that the Packers’ Safety is Xavier McKinney and he’s had Jalen’s number. Going back to 2021 when Xavier was with the Giants, he’s played Jalen five times and he’s intercepted him four times, including one on the third play of this season.

The Packers have been really good at getting takeaways. As a team, they had 31 total (fourth most in the NFL), and eight of those were McKinney’s interceptions. 

If the Packers win this game, a big part would be because they win the turnover differential. Jalen’s going to have to do his part to make sure that doesn’t happen.

A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith vs. Keisean Nixon and Carrington Valentine

Jaire Alexander is the Packers’ best cornerback, but that doesn’t matter because he went on the IR last week. That leaves Keisean Nixon and Carrington Valentine as the two guys who are going to have to stop A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. 

That’s mostly a good thing. The Eagles wide receivers out-class those two corners in just about every way imaginable. Unfortunately, Jaire was the Packers’ best corner in man coverage and without him, they’re probably going to run more zone coverages. 

That’s a bummer because Jalen Hurts is considerably better against man coverage than zone.

A.J. and Devonta need to take advantage of the snaps where they get man coverage and make explosive plays. They need to win fast, make their defender miss, and get yards after the catch.

The Packers are susceptible to the old, ‘A.J. Brown runs a slant over and over’ game plan. It’s a great game plan.

The Eagles offense vs. the first quarter

The Eagles’ offense starts slow, which stinks. With all of the talent they have on that side of the ball, it’s pretty disgusting how bad it’s been. This season, they’ve only scored 61 points in the first quarter. That’s an average of 3.6 points per game… which also stinks.

The Packers are way different. They’ve scored 109 points in the first quarter, which is an average of 6.4 points per game. They get off to hot starts.

In the Wild Card round last season, the Packers went into halftime with a 27-0 lead over the Cowboys and they were able to control the game. The Eagles can’t let that happen. They can’t waste drives in the first half. They need to move the ball efficiently and get their stranglehold going early. 

For a while, asking for the Eagles' offense to score early was like asking for a Mazda Miata to handle snow: there was no way in hell that it would ever happen… but in three of the Eagles' last four games, it’s changed and they’ve actually put up some points in the first quarter.

The hope here is that Jalen doesn’t have any rust from his time in concussion protocol. Hopefully, he gets on the field and picks up right where he left off in the Commanders game and brings the offense downfield two or three times in a row… but even if he does it just once, it’ll be a win.

These are all matchups that are winnable for the Eagles. They’re the better team and they have a whole lot more roads to victory than the Packers do.