Eagles Send GB Packing

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Eagles Send GB Packing

Posted: January 12th, 2025 | Author: Tommy Lawlor

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty, but the outcome was beautiful, as the Eagles beat the Packers 22-10 in the wild card round. This was a tough, physical game, with both teams losing players to injury. The defenses out-played the offenses for both teams. The difference in the game was the turnover battle, which the Eagles won 4-0.

This game reminded me a bit of the playoff opener in 2017, when the Eagles beat the Falcons 15-10. That was a tough, tense game where both teams seemed sloppy. The Eagles got past that and played at a high level in the next two games. We’ll have to wait and see if the team can put this performance in the rearview mirror and play better.

The Eagles defense was lights out. They held the Packers to 302 yards and 10 points, a season low for scoring. They hadn’t scored less than 20 points in the final eight games of the season. Green Bay tied a season high with 4 turnovers (3 on offense, 1 on STs). Jordan Love was 20 for 33, but never looked comfortable. Josh Jacobs finished 18-81. He got 31 yards on one run so he was 17-50 the rest of the way. That made it tough for the Packers to sustain drives.

This was a physical game. The Packers lost two WRs, their LG and C, and a RB to injury. It could have been more than that. I’m going off memory. Nolan Smith took on the pulling LG and hit him so hard that Elgton Jenkins left the game and never returned. Reed Blankenship punished receivers who caught the ball over the middle. They were clean hits. They were also big hits.

As good as the defense was, they could have been better. The tackling was sloppy. Give GB credit for some of that. Their skill players did not go down on first contact. Jacobs was especially tough to tackle. CJGJ had a chance for an INT, but didn’t make the catch. Vic Fangio will be happy with his unit’s performance. He will also let them know they need to be better next week.

There is no doubt that the Eagles offense must be better. They jumped out to a 10-0 lead and things looked good. The next four drives netted 24 yards and no points. That allowed the Packers to stay in the game. You don’t want to play like that in the postseason. You need to take advantage of the other team struggling.

There were analysts/media folks who raised the notion of Jalen Hurts being rusty. I doubted that because we’ve seen him miss time before and he had played so much this season. I was wrong. Hurts did look rusty. His timing was off. He looked hesitant. He made some poor throws.

It didn’t look like the play-calling helped matters. Replays didn’t exactly show a lot of open receivers. Still, there were plays when Hurts had a lot of time and ended up throwing the ball away. He also took one really bad sack when he went down instead of throwing the ball out of bounds. Hurts has to clean stuff like that up. The passing offense we saw in the playoff opener won’t be good enough in the coming games.

AJ Brown caught 1 pass for 10 yards. Was his knee bothering him more than we knew? Was the passing game just dysfunctional? DeVonta Smith was 4-55. Dallas Goedert was 4-48 and had the offensive play of the game.

Saquon Barkley got to experience a home playoff game for the first time and enjoyed himself. He went 25-119 and could have had more than that, but he slid down after breaking a big run late in the game.

The Eagles have plenty to work on, which is fine. You don’t need to peak in the first round of the playoffs. I think Hurts will play better in the next round. He’ll have a full week of practice and any rust should be gone. The biggest concern will be the loss of Nakobe Dean to a knee injury. We don’t know anything officially. He was on crutches after the game and it doesn’t look good. Oren Burks replaced him against the Packers and played sloppy.

It felt good to see the team go win a playoff game. Pretty or not, winning in the postseason is special.

http://igglesblitz.com/2025/01/eagles-send-packing/