Packer Central

Packers Are Playoff Underdogs Against Eagles, Potential Rematch vs. Lions

The Green Bay Packers will have to play their best game to upend the Philadelphia Eagles and advance to a divisional-round playoff game at the Detroit Lions.

Bill Huber

Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love (10) tries to yell out the play over the roar of the crowd at Ford Field.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love (10) tries to yell out the play over the roar of the crowd at Ford Field. / Kimberly P. Mitchell / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – Last year as the No. 7 seed, the Green Bay Packers faced the second-seeded and NFC East-winning Dallas Cowboys in the NFC wild-card playoffs.

As 7.5-point underdogs, the Packers won by 16.

Can the Packers do it again? As the No. 7 seed, they will play at the No. 2 seed and NFC East-winning Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC wild-card playoffs on Sunday.

The Packers are consensus 4.5-point underdogs.

“It is what it is,” receiver Jayden Reed said on Wednesday. “That’s an opinion, at the end of the day. Everyone’s got their opinion. Our mindset is just go out there, do our job and execute.”

If the Packers can upset the Eagles, they’d face a familiar opponent in the divisional round. The Detroit Lions are the No. 1 seed with a 15-2 record. They beat the Packers twice, including 34-31 at Detroit in Week 14, when Lions coach Dan Campbell gambled and won on fourth down to set up a last-play field goal to win the game.

The Packers, however, are entering the playoffs on a two-game losing streak, including 24-22 against the Chicago Bears on Sunday.

“It’s everything. It’s everything you do while you’re in this facility, when you go home,” quarterback Jordan Love said on Wednesday. “The way we talk about concepts and how we install it, how we go run it in the walkthroughs, and make sure everybody’s on the same page with the timing — just exactly how you’re running routes, things like that.

“And then it takes over on the practice field when we’re getting those full-speed live reps at it. That comes down to just being at our best, being on the same page and that’s everything we do while we’re here in the building.”

At FanDuel Sportsbook, the Packers are 4.5-point underdogs for a potential playoff rematch against the Lions.

“When we are hitting on all cylinders, there’s not a lot of teams, I feel like, that can mess with us in general,” running back Josh Jacobs said. “It’s just more so about doing it on a consistent basis and having the attentiveness to want to do the little things right every play.

“And I think that’s the biggest thing that we have to learn as a young team is that it’s going to take every play. Whatever you’re doing, you’re going to have to strain, you’re going to have to be physical or whatever, it’s going to take everybody. And I think that’s the thing that we’ve got to learn as a unit and, once we learn that, I think the sky’s the limit.”

Of course, Packers-Lions, Round 3, is nothing but a hypothetical. The Packers must win at Philadelphia, which will be no small task.

After a 2-2 start, the Eagles won 12 of their last 13 games. The only loss was when starting quarterback Jalen Hurts suffered a concussion during the first quarter of a three-point loss to the Commanders.

The Eagles went 7-1 at Lincoln Financial Field. After losing at home in Week 2, they won their last seven games.

“Definitely for me because I felt like I played terrible the first time we played them,” Jacobs said of motivation to see the Eagles again. “So, for me, I’ve been looking forward to this, to seeing them again at some point. They’re a good team, man. I think that for us to go in and play a good team like that and get a win, I think it would be huge for our team. So, I’m looking forward to it.”

Coach Matt LaFleur added about 20 minutes to Wednesday’s practice in hopes of getting rid of some of the late-season sloppiness.

“There’s always going to be things that you need to clean up, but I think the emphasis is on the detail and playing with great fundamentals, pad level,,” he said on Wednesday. “If you go back to the last time we played these guys, we had some costly mistakes, be it penalties, playing with poor fundamentals or a couple plays defensively where we didn’t get aligned right, and that really hurt us.

“So it’s just getting all 11 on the same page, making sure everybody is doing their responsibility to the best of their ability and playing with great technique, effort, fundamentals, physicality.”

Of the 14 teams in the playoffs, Green Bay has the eighth-shortest odds to win the Super Bowl.

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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.