The Redskins led 5-0 in the first quarter, but the advantage could have been larger.
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It was an embarrassing lesson for Jackson but not costly to the Eagles because they scored a touchdown on the next play.
“You’ve got to shut down the running game, try to get them one-dimensional”, he said. They only ran the ball nine times for 19 yards in the first half, but they eventually got things going scoring 17 unanswered points to close out the second quarter and head into halftime with a 17-11 lead. It starts with the quarterback. “That was one huge key that got rolling”, said Nickel.
The excitement was palpable at Wiggly Field in Weston after the game.
But Green Bay will take renewed optimism into next week’s battle after producing one of their best performances of the season to outmuscle the Redskins and quarterback Kirk Cousins, who was sacked six times. “Didn’t let doubt creep in when we went down 11-0”, Rodgers said after the win. “And usually that’s the difference when you lose a ball game”.
With over 12 minutes left to play, Green Bay running back Eddie Lacy capped off a 10-play, 76-yard drive with a two-yard touchdown run to extend the lead to 32-18.
“That’s the way you want to play offense”, McCarthy said. He has to be able to manage the whole thing, and he’s a master of that.
And yes, we’ll hand it to that rotund sonofabitch. We had a couple of third down and three or fours but the ball was coming out so quick it was hard to get there. “But we needed a game like this to get our mojo back and get our confidence going”.
The victory sends the Packers (11-6) into a rematch with the second seeded Arizona Cardinals next Saturday night at University of Phoenix Stadium where Arizona rolled Green Bay 38-8 just three weeks ago. Aaron Rodgers and the rest of the offense has been struggling mightily, for their standards, since week seven. “He knows what looks there are and he knows how to call out of them and just get it to the right person”.
For the Redskins, the game represented an offensive regression back to early in the season, when the team started 2-4. The Packers passer started out 1-for-8 for 11 yards. Aaron Rodgers is completing 58.3 percent of his passes for 210 yards, two touchdowns and zero interceptions.
“When you get into the playoffs”, coach Mike McCarthy said, “you don’t have to talk about the regular season anymore”. And we did a good job of establishing the line of scrimmage. Of the 46 passes Cousins attempted, just five were intended for him. His only turnover came on a strip sack by Packers defensive lineman Mike Neal in the second quarter.
They’d punted three times, picked up one first down and given up a safety on their four possessions, leaving little reason to think that a breakthrough was about to happen for a unit that was underwhelming for the majority of the regular season.
The Redskins looked like the better team in the early going.
“I think we did a decent job of neutralizing the run game”, B.J. Raji said. It’s another challenge ahead of us.
Rodgers and the Packers then began to show the ability to gain yards in chunks and put points on the board they had been missing while losing six of their final 10 games and letting the NFC North title slip away.
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“We came together (Sunday)”. They’re responding. We’re headed to Arizona now. That game was also Christmas weekend, a time when it was easy for people to be off from work and make the flight out to Arizona.
