Eagles ride stifling defense to emphatic wild-card win over Packers
PHILADELPHIA — Jalen Hurts tossed two touchdown passes in his first game since a late-season concussion, Dallas Goedert threw three stiff-arms on a rugged touchdown catch and the Philadelphia Eagles rode their NFL-best defense to a 22-10 wild-card playoff win over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night.Hurts threw for a modest 131 yards but played with no hesitation in his return from a three-week layoff after a concussion in December.He started strong — six straight completions to open the game — and held off the Packers with a 24-yard touchdown pass to Goedert in the third quarter that will be forever stamped on the franchise’s postseason highlight reel.Philadelphia’s defense handled the rest.The Eagles turned a recovered fumble on the opening kickoff into Hurts’ first TD pass three plays later and the defense picked off Jordan Love twice in the first half.
Holding a 19-10 lead in the fourth, the Eagles forced a turnover on downs when Green Bay had a fourth-and-3 on its own 41 with five minutes left in the game.Quinyon Mitchell had one final interception of Love with 1:51 left in the game that sealed the win for the NFC East champions, who’ll host a division game next week at the Linc.The Eagles had the book on the Packers — and had time for some light reading as wide receiver A.J.Brown flipped through the pages of “Inner Excellence” by Jim Murphy while on the bench.
Brown had one catch for 10 yards.Love threw for 212 yards and was intercepted three times as he nursed a sore right elbow that was hurt in the regular-season finale against Chicago.Josh Jacobs ran for 81 yards and a score — and popped Green Bay’s offense with a 31-yard run in the third where he shook off one tackle, had his jersey stretched to his heel by one defender, plowed one more and dragged two more hapless Eagles to the 1-yard line.Jacobs punched it in for the score on the next play and cut it to 16-10.Aided by an unnecessary roughness flag on Green Bay, Hurts got the ...