World’s Best Preview: ‘Run the table’ started against Eagles

In 2016, the Green Bay Packers lost their fourth consecutive game, a 42-24 setback at Washington that sent the team to 4-6 and the brink of elimination.

A few days later, quarterback Aaron Rodgers proclaimed: “I feel like we can run the table, I really do. The offense is starting to click a little bit more. We’ve just got to put together a game where we’re more consistent from the first snap to the last. We’ve been, I think, getting closer to that. We’ve really been clicking, at times, in the last few games.”

It sounded absurd but, on “Monday Night Football” eight days after not being able to keep up with the high-flying Redskins, Rodgers and Co. stormed into Philadelphia and knocked off the Eagles 27-13. Rodgers threw touchdown passes for 12 and 20 yards to Davante Adams and the defense collected four sacks to start an improbable eight-game winning streak to the NFC Championship Game.

“I remember everybody was counting us out, and I made some comments during the week,” Rodgers said on Monday. “Felt strongly about our squad coming off of the Washington game, how we played on offense, and felt for our defense – it started fast – if we could kind of give them a lead, we could get some things going. And Davante had a big game that night, caught a couple important touchdowns. I thought Jordy (Nelson) was spectacular. We had a great plan. We really took care of the football and dominated the time of possession that night, and that started some really nice wins.”

Packers lead the series: Green Bay leads the series 26-14, with five wins in the last six matchups – including 21-16 in the wild-card round en route to winning Super Bowl XLV. In four career starts against the Eagles, Rodgers is 4-0 with 10 touchdowns vs. two interceptions.

Desperate times: The Eagles figure to be a desperate bunch. At 1-2, they’re in danger of falling well off the pace in the NFC East behind Dallas (3-0). Only once in the Super Bowl era has a team started 1-3 and won the championship: the 2001 New England Patriots. That team, of course, was rescued by Tom Brady replacing an injured Drew Bledsoe.

“You know, we're not really looking at this as a bad spot,” Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz said told reporters in Philadelphia this week. “We’re 1-2, yeah, but we have a lot of the season left. (There are) little things here and there in each game that we know we’re going to get corrected and we’re going to be in a good spot. And like I said, we’re excited Thursday night to go show what we can do and get going back in the win column.”

From bad to good: There are seven undefeated teams. Four of them failed to make playoffs last season, with the Packers (3-0) joined by Buffalo (3-0), San Francisco (3-0) and Detroit (2-0-1). Since 1990, this marks the fourth time that four teams were undefeated through three games (2002, 2003 and 2013 were the others). Only once have four teams made it unscathed through Week 4. In 2003, Carolina, Denver, Kansas City and Minnesota opened 4-0, with the Panthers reaching Super Bowl XXXVIII.

“We feel 3-0,” Rodgers said. “We feel great about where we’re at. It’s exciting. It hasn’t happened in a few years. We’ve beaten three good football teams. You look at our division, I think there’s only two losses in our division, and it’s games that we won. We know how tough our division is going to be with Detroit undefeated with a tie, and the other two are 2-1. So, we feel really good about where we’re at. It’s exciting. We’ve got a great opportunity in front of us to go 4-0 and get a little bit of rest. We’re feeling good about where we’re at but offensively, we’d like to be feeling a little bit better.”

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