The Eagles will face the Packers on Monday night at Lambeau Field in a marquee matchup that has some juice behind it stemming from last year's playoffs, and as a measuring-stick game for both teams as Super Bowl contenders.
There's plenty of history between these two, both very recently and going back decades to the 1960 NFL Championship, when Chuck Bednarik, Tommy McDonald, and the Birds upset Vince Lombardi's Packers at a bitter-cold Franklin Field.
There's been plenty of memories since, and before the Eagles and Packers write out the new chapter on Monday night in Green Bay, here's a look back…
Bye bye Valentine
2024 Wild Card
The Eagles arrived to the playoffs as a juggernaut, with the best rushing attack in the league, a defense that fully realized how suffocating it could be, and Jalen Hurts cleared of concussion protocol and ready to go.
The Packers made it out of a tough NFC North as a Wild Card, and had hopes of taking a next step with Jordan Love into something more.
But the Eagles, especially with the home-field advantage at Lincoln Financial Field, weren't stopping for anyone.
Oren Burks forced a fumble on the opening kickoff that Hurts and the Eagles immediately flipped into a touchdown pass to Jahan Dotson.
The Philly defense left Love and the Packers stuck in the mud and throwing interceptions for three quarters, and then, when the Eagles needed the play to pull away, Dallas Goedert took a screen pass, then bodied Carrington Valentine with repeated stiff arms along the whole trip to the end zone.
The Packers were in over their heads and going nowhere. Their season was done, and the Eagles were well on their way with a 22-10 Wild Card win.
But for good measure, Quinyon Mitchell picked off Love one more time for, finally, the star rookie's first career interception.
GOEDERT STIFF ARM TD 💪
📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/v2VnSa6kJX— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) January 12, 2025
The aftermath from this game is important to note, too, because it feeds into hype heading toward Monday night.
The Eagles romped to the Super Bowl. The Packers went home and had to confront where they went wrong. Their president and CEO Mark Murphy answered a fan question on how he felt about the Eagles notorious "Tush Push." He didn't like it, and then a couple of months later, there the Packers were, suddenly leading the charge on an owners vote to ban the "Tush Push."
It ultimately failed, at least in that instance, but that wasn't a move neither the Eagles nor their fans were about to forget.
In the Packers' case, it also missed the point.
They didn't lose because of the "Tush Push" – noticed how it's not even mentioned in the memory of the game above.
They lost because they couldn't take care of the football and got destroyed in the turnover battle, and also because when they needed a tackle, Valentine instead got put on a poster – or better yet, a Nike ad.
It’s Good to be Green. pic.twitter.com/uUYClYriNV
— Nike (@Nike) February 10, 2025
There's something so satisfying about Goedert throwing out a gloved palm as it's synced up to Kermit singing "Why wonder? Why wonder?"
A special start in São Paulo
2024 Week 1
All champions start somewhere, and for the 2024 Eagles, it was down in São Paulo, Brazil, against that very same Packers team, and in the first show that Saquon Barkley was about to do something incredible in Philadelphia.
In his first game as an Eagle, Barkley caught the night's first touchdown, then ran for two more – both to reclaim the lead – on the way to 109 rushing yards and a 34-29 win for the Birds.
There was also Zack Baun, the new linebacker on the other side, covering the entire field while piling up 15 tackles and the Eagles' only two sacks.
Turned out he was set to take off for the Eagles, too.
HURTS TO SAQUON FOR THE @EAGLES FIRST TD!
📺: #GBvsPHI on Peacock pic.twitter.com/WeEql9w1Ed— NFL (@NFL) September 7, 2024
The end Hurts
2020 Week 13
The Eagles were getting crushed, and former coach Doug Pederson had seen enough.
After Aaron Rodgers had completed his 400th career touchdown pass to Davante Adams to put the Eagles in a 17-point hole within a barren Lambeau Field (remember, this was the COVID season), Pederson benched Carson Wentz and threw second-round rookie Jalen Hurts in to finish the game.
The Eagles still lost big, 30-16, but with Pederson's decision, he also knocked down the first domino to bring an era to an end in the process.
Hurts started the rest of the year. Pederson was fired, Nick Sirianni was hired, and Wentz was traded to Indianapolis.
What once was the future, the next decade in Eagles football, the "new norm" of frequent Super Bowl parades that Pederson proudly exclaimed atop the Art Museum steps several years prior, that was over.
And even though Hurts and Sirianni rapidly rose into the next, and far more successful, era of the team, at the time, they were both very much unknowns and even near-disregarded as stepping stones in what was supposed to be a much grander rebuild.
#Packers Week!
2020: Jalen Hurts 1st TD Pass #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/0qa0ju3ffM— All About The Birds (@AATBirds) January 11, 2025
The make-or-break of two eras
2010 Wild Card
Ironically, the Eagles' long-term trajectory always seems to alter whenever they play the Packers.
Week 1 of the 2010 season against Green Bay, the Birds ran out from the tunnel at Lincoln Financial Field, dressed in their Kelly Green 1960 celebration uniforms, always knowing that this season was going to be different.
They had moved on from Donovan McNabb at quarterback and were ready to hand the reins over to Kevin Kolb, who had been waiting in the wings for several years.
But then Kolb's head got spiked into the dirt when Clay Matthews chased him down and tackled him from behind, leading the appointed starting QB to exit with a concussion.
Michael Vick, who at the time was a very polarizing figure not far removed from his prison sentence for his part in a dogfighting ring, took over and played well.
The Eagles lost that day, but they didn't look back from having to put Vick in.
Vick scrambled past blitzers and tossed deep balls over safeties to a near-MVP degree, and the Eagles rallied into the playoffs to get a rematch against the Packers in the Wild Card round, once again at home.
But the Eagles were left always playing catch-up.
Aaron Rodgers tossed three touchdown passes to keep the Packers ahead by 11 in the third quarter, and leaving the Eagles needing to make a second-half comeback.
Vick led a scoring drive to keep them close late into the fourth quarter, but a failed two-point conversion on an illegal touch penalty charged to Brent Celek put the Eagles in a spot where a touchdown was mandatory on their last possession to stay alive.
With 44 seconds left, Vick lofted a ball up for Riley Cooper (who became his own problem a couple of years later) as a last-ditch effort into the end zone, but Packers DB Tramon Williams leaped up in front of it for the game-sealing pick.
The Packers won, 21-16, and used that game as the launching pad for their Super Bowl run, while the Vick-era Eagles never reached those same 2010 heights again in the couple of uneven years they had after.
We take you back to the 2010 Wild Card matchup between @AaronRodgers12's @packers and Michael Vick's Eagles! (Jan. 9, 2011)#PHIvsGB: Thursday 8pm ET on @nflnetwork | @NFLonFOX | @PrimeVideo pic.twitter.com/lGH0FGA117
— NFL Legacy (@NFLLegacy) September 25, 2019
4th and 26
2003 Divisional Round
The Packers had built up a 14-0 lead in the playoff matchup at a newly-opened Linc, but a goal-line stand just before the half and elusiveness in the pocket from Donovan McNabb kept the Eagles around, and brought them back.
McNabb scrambled around Green Bay pass rushers who just couldn't get a hold of him, then fired a bullet to Todd Pinkston at the pylon for the tying touchdown early into the fourth quarter.
Brett Favre quickly responded with a play-action bomb downfield that set Green Bay up for a field goal in close to take the lead back.
The clock was ticking, and after a sack of McNabb that sent him 16 yards backwards with less than two minutes left, the Eagles' entire season came down to one play: 4th and 26.
In need of a miracle, McNabb dropped back and catapulted a pass over the middle of the field, over the outstretched arm of a Packers DB and into the hands of a leaping Freddie Mitchell, who landed right on the marker just as Green Bay's two safeties closed in for the tackle.
The ref pointed forward to signal first down. Mitchell got up, and after a fist pump, made his signature flash of a title belt.
The Eagles were still alive. They pushed just a bit further downfield for David Akers to kick the tying field goal for overtime. Then Brett Favre threw up an inexplicable arm punt right into the grasp of Brian Dawkins, which the Eagles took back the other way, this time for the winning Akers field goal in a 20-17 final.
The Birds, on a lifeline, completed the comeback and advanced to their third straight NFC Championship Game.
They were on the doorstep of the Super Bowl once again…then Ricky Manning went and became Philadelphia's newest heartbreaker.
Fourth and 26.
15 years ago today.
(2003 Divisional: Jan. 11, 2004) @Eagles @donovanjmcnabb @FMitchell84 pic.twitter.com/1nJyG8mLO8— NFL Legacy (@NFLLegacy) January 11, 2019
Reggie's return
1994 Week 3
In 1993, Reggie White left the Eagles for a different shade of green with the Packers, and the chance to go win a title.
On Sept. 18, 1994, the Minister of Defense made his return to Veterans Stadium and a city of Philadelphia that adored him, with both the Eagles and the Packers decked out in throwbacks to celebrate the NFL's 75th anniversary.
White brought some havoc to his former quarterback Randall Cunningham, but the Eagles' defense made it tenfold on a much younger Favre, with six sacks in a 13-7 Philadelphia win.
It certainly wouldn't be the last of brutal days for Favre in South Philly.
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