Packer Central

Three Reasons Why Packers Will Lose to Eagles

The Green Bay Packers will host the defending Super Bowl champions on Monday night. Here are three reasons why the Philadelphia Eagles will leave Lambeau Field with a win.
Bill Huber|
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts rushes the ball against the Green Bay Packers during their NFC wild-card game.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts rushes the ball against the Green Bay Packers during their NFC wild-card game. | Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

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Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers are favored to beat the Philadelphia Eagles.

For some reason.

The Eagles are healthy. They’re coming off their bye. And they’re playing better. Those are three intangible reasons why the Packers will lose to the Eagles. Here are three more.

1. How Will Packers Move the Ball?

This week, there was talk of this being a “measuring stick” game for the Packers, who are coming off a woeful performance in an upset loss to the Panthers. But what are we measuring? The Eagles are coming off their bye, so they will be rested and healthy on defense.

If the Eagles are going to be walking tall and carrying a big stick, the Packers will be carrying crutches. They lost star tight end Tucker Kraft to a torn ACL last week, and he joined top receiver Jayden Reed on injured reserve.

Receiver Dontyavion Wicks should be back in the lineup after missing two games with a calf injury, but he might be limited. Rookie receiver Matthew Golden (shoulder) didn’t practice on Friday and Saturday and might not play on Monday. Rookie receiver Savion Williams (foot) may or may not be available, either, and he hasn’t shown he’s ready to be anything more than a gadget player, anyway.

Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Nolan Smith Jr. (3) applies pressure on Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love.
Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Nolan Smith Jr. (3) applies pressure on Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love. | Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

The interior defensive line of the Eagles’ 3-4 alignment is formidable, with 336-pound Jordan Davis flanked by Jalen Carter, a second-team All-Pro last year, and Moro Ojomo, who leads the team in sacks this year.

Davis will see a lot of left guard Aaron Banks, who has been battling injuries all season, and Carter will go against the right guard merry-go-round of Jordan Morgan, who is coming off a poor performance against Carolina, and Sean Rhyan.

Those three players, along with linebackers Zack Baun and Jihaad Campbell, are going to make it tough for running back Josh Jacobs to find any room to get started.

Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio called Jacobs “one of the best backs in the league.”

In a perfect world, The Packers might be able to deal with the run-game challenges with Jordan Love and the passing game. However, along with the Packers’ injury issues in the passing game, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman did what he always does, and that’s address areas of need.

With their pass rush ranking 25th in sack percentage, he traded for Jaelan Phillips and coaxed Brandon Graham out of retirement. With the return of Nolan Smith, who sacked Love twice in the playoff game, from injured reserve, the Eagles now have a pass rush.

“I think we added great additions to the room,” Smith told reporters this week. “We’re a bunch of hungry guys ready to go work and go eat.”

Combining the power of the Eagles’ defensive front with the issues on Green Bay’s perimeter, it could be a tough night for the Packers’ offense.

2. Red Zone

Green Bay had one of the best red-zone attacks in the NFL this season before going 1-of-5 last week against Carolina. That’s how the Packers managed to not punt but also not win last week.

The Packers entered last week with a 70.0 percent touchdown rate in the red zone, which was seventh in the NFL. So, this week wasn’t exactly about throwing out the baby with the bath water.

“I don’t want to overreact to anything,” coach Matt LaFleur said on Saturday. “Obviously, you better acknowledge it. You acknowledge that it happened and then you try to take the necessary [action] to not allow it to happen again.”

Green Bay enters this game ranked 12th in the red zone (62.9 percent touchdowns). Because Josh Jacobs’ nose for the goal line is like a bloodhound on the hunt for a criminal, it’s fifth in goal-to-go situations (93.3 percent touchdowns).

Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs (8) against the Philadelphia Eagles during their playoff game.
Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs (8) against the Philadelphia Eagles during their playoff game. | Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

Defensively, the Eagles are elite in the red zone. They are No. 2 in the league with opponents scoring touchdowns just 46.2 percent of the time.

Green Bay ran 14 plays from the red zone last week and gained 20 yards. On six dropbacks, the Jordan Love-led passing game gained 7 yards. There was a false start and a fumble for added insult.

“Not to rehash it, but, in the first half, we got down there three times and had six points,” LaFleur said. “You had a fumble, you had a drive-stopping penalty and you had a 2-minute situation where you might attack it a little bit differently. And then in the second half, you got a turnover on downs and then the touchdown. So, you don’t want to overreact to that. You got to consider the situations and trust your process and how you go about doing it.”

On the other side of the ball, the Eagles are the best red-zone team in the NFL. They are No. 1 in the red zone (85.0 percent touchdowns) and a perfect 100.0 percent in goal-to-go situations. Green Bay’s defense is 22nd in the red zone (63.6 percent touchdowns) but fourth in goal-to-go (61.5 percent touchdowns).

Defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley said his unit is still “figuring it out,” even though it’s ninth in points allowed and second in yards allowed per play.

“Do I think we’re playing our best football yet? No, I don’t,” he said. “I think we need to be more consistent. I think we have times when we are playing at a really, really high level. I think our guys are playing really hard. I think fundamentally, they’re playing really well. I think we’re playing clean for the most part. There’s not – knock on wood – there’s not a lot of busts and just free guys running all over the place.

“But I think that’s the beautiful thing about playing defense. You just keep getting better and evolving and, hopefully, you’re peaking at the right time. And I don’t think we’re there yet.”

3. Yes, the Tush Push

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

After losing twice to the Eagles last season, Packers pushed a proposal to ban the Tush Push this past offseason.

Well, not really. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wanted to ban the Tush Push, an aesthetically ugly play, and asked outgoing Packers President Mark Murphy to lead the charge.

The vote fell just short and the Packers will have to deal with the ramifications.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts had to deal with a new look on a Tush Push against the Vikings.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts had to deal with a new look on a Tush Push against the Vikings. | Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

“I have no idea what they’re going to do,” defensive tackle Karl Brooks said. “They might run it the first play of the game. You never know, but we'll see. I'm looking forward to it, anyway.”

The Tush Push is practically an automatic first down. According to ESPN, from 2022 through the first couple games of 2025, the Eagles converted an astounding 96.6 percent of the time on fourth-and-1.

This season, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is 11-of-13 on third-and-1 and fourth-and-1. Both failures came on third-and-1; both times, they converted on fourth-and-1. Hurts has been successful on 84.6 percent of his Tush Pushes this year. The league median on third- and fourth-and-1, both run and pass, is 62.5 percent. Offensively (57.2 percent) and defensively (64.7 percent), the Packers are just a bit below average.

Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, along with most of his players, said the best way to stop the Tush Push is to get in those positions. You can’t Tush Push on third-and-8, obviously. That’s wishful thinking, though. The Eagles have a powerful offensive line and they have Saquon Barkley. Of course they’re going to get into third-and-short. Their offense is predictated on getting to third- and fourth-and-short.

The 2025 schedule was released in May, though the Packers knew they’d be facing the Eagles long before that. The plan to stop the Tush Push was formulated this week, but it’s been on Hafley’s mind for a while.

“What you start to do is, when you start to see crossover tape and you start to see other people run it, you start to save those clips and try to figure out who’s doing it best,” Hafley said. “Are there ways that people have stopped it? And then, are there other things you can think of outside the box to stop it? Which is really hard to do. I mean, the success rate is incredible and they’ve done such a good job mastering it.”

In the Super Bowl, Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones lined up sideways and got a sore neck for trying. The Vikings tried this a couple weeks ago.

Going brawn vs. brawn won’t work for the Packers. The Eagles have one of the biggest offensive lines in the NFL while the Packers didn’t really replace the beef brought by TJ Slaton.

Packers defensive end Micah Parsons is an outspoken critic of the play.

“It’s really the pushing and the pulling and the offsides, people jumping, people leaving before the ball’s snapped,” Parsons said on Friday. “There’s no other play where there’s this much discrepancy on a play in the NFL. The NFL even made a mistake saying they own the mistakes for (penalties) not called. I feel like there’s only one way to eliminate that, but how can we control it come the game? We have to win the first and second down.”

The Packers can’t look to the officials to help.

Or replay.

They’ll have to take matters into their own hands. The problem is, every team’s plan has been Brotherly Shoved out of the way by a bruising offensive line, a powerful quarterback and a bunch of pushing.

“Looking at other ways that teams have tried to defend it, we’ve gotten other ideas, and we have some outside-the-box ideas,” Hafley said. “We’re going to try our best to stay out of that situation, but if we get into it, we have a plan and we’ll try to execute it.”

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.