Jalen Hurts went 26 and a half minutes without completing a pass during the Eagles’ wild-card win over the Packers. From 1:20 left in the first quarter to 4:41 left in the third quarter, Hurts was 0-for-7, with a sack for three yards.
The Eagles ran 19 plays without a pass completion, which is far from ideal. Despite this, Hurts bounced back and made key plays to help the Eagles secure a 22-10 victory.
Hurts completed three passes in a crucial third-quarter drive: a 28-yard pass and a 9-yard pass to DeVonta Smith, and a 24-yard touchdown pass to Dallas Goedert. Hurts finished 13-for-21 with 131 yards, two touchdowns, and no turnovers. A.J. Brown caught only one pass for 10 yards.
Hurts now has 158 consecutive postseason passes without an interception, the 7th-longest streak in NFL history. Still, the Eagles know they will need a more productive passing game to win consistently. Hurts’ 13 completions are the fewest by an Eagles quarterback in a playoff game since Ron Jaworski’s performance in the 1980 NFC Championship Game.
“We kind of got stagnant, but I thought the second half we battled, we steadily improved,” said Lane Johnson. “It was a tough, grinding game. Nothing really pops out as far as significant, huge plays. But we battled. I felt like we in some ways under-performed. We’ve got to be more consistent.”
Hurts only completed two passes longer than 11 yards, both coming in the third quarter to Smith and Goedert. Hurts said his time off after a concussion against the Commanders on December 22 did not affect his performance, but he certainly seemed rusty.
“We struggled a little bit,” said Nick Sirianni. “I don’t think we had the game that we wanted to have on offense, but Jalen I think did a lot of good things. First of all, Jalen is a winner. He wins. I mean, no one can argue that.
The other thing is we know when we take care of the football, the things that happen when we take care of the football, and Jalen’s on this pace of the efficiency that he’s played with this year with his quarterback rating, with his yards per attempt, and all those different things, to be able to do that while also taking care of the football is huge.”
The Eagles had a +4 turnover margin, which helped overcome many offensive struggles. In the postseason, the main goal is to win and move on, and that’s exactly what the Eagles did.
This marks the Eagles’ fourth time in the last eight years making it to the conference semifinals and their 11th time since 2000.
“It’s all about winning,” Hurts said. “That’s the only thing we’ve got to the point we are. So, it’s about finding ways to win.”
The Eagles are now 4-1 this season when passing for fewer than 125 yards, a rare feat. They are the first team to win four or more games with less than 125 passing yards since the 2009 Cleveland Browns.
“We left a lot of plays out there,” said Jordan Mailata. “I don’t want to call it rust. Just execution.”
In his first postseason game with the Eagles, Saquon Barkley ran for 119 yards, the fourth-most in franchise history, and the most since Brian Westbrook’s 141 yards in the 2006 wild-card game.
“We survived,” said Barkley. “We won a football game against a really good team. It’s playoff football. We did what we needed to do. Things we can improve on. No matter what, even if we came out here and won 40-3, there’s still so much stuff we can improve on.
We’ll find out who we’ve got next and get ready for them. In the end, stats don’t matter. We’ve got to be our biggest critic and that’s what we’re going to be and we’re going to see what we can improve on, but the only thing that really matters is that we win. Throw for 400 yards, rush for 400 yards and win 3-0? I don’t care. I just want to win. And I know that’s the mindset of the team.”
