We’ve seen the Saints and the Eagles square off before. It wasn’t pretty.
The two playoff teams met back in Week 11, where Drew Brees threw for 363 yards and four touchdowns to push his name to the front of the MVP race in a 48-7 dismantling in New Orleans. But Philadelphia will be able to rely on one major change when these two teams meet again with a spot in the NFC title game on the line; they’ve got some big Nick energy behind center.
Nick Foles, the reigning Super Bowl MVP, will have the chance to prove he’s the difference between success and failure for an uneven Eagles team. They’ll get a chance at redemption when they travel to New Orleans for a rematch with the team who finished 2018 with the NFL’s best record — Brees’ Saints.
Foles adds some intrigue to a rematch of one of 2018’s biggest blowouts
The Eagles didn’t have a prayer back in Week 11, falling behind early and failing to dig themselves out of an ever-deepening hole while starting quarterback Carson Wentz struggled his way to the worst performance of his professional career. The third-year passer threw for just 156 yards while slinging three interceptions in the rout.
Wentz won’t be available on Sunday thanks to a back injury. Instead, it’ll be Foles getting his first-ever crack at the Saints.
Foles has harnessed the lightning that pushed Philadelphia to its first-ever Super Bowl win last season in pushing the club to four straight wins and into the final spot in the NFC side of the playoffs. And while he struggled early against the Bears Sunday, he’s still the player who threw a pair of second half touchdown passes to lead his time to a comeback win in the hostile confines of Soldier Field.
Nick Foles, man
— SB Nation NFL (@SBNationNFL) January 7, 2019
: @thecheckdown pic.twitter.com/vQ5gFzFRCz
And he’ll always be the guy who set an NFL record by recording a passer rating of 100+ in his first four playoff starts.
Foles is impossible to predict, but he’s saved his best performances for some of Philly’s biggest games. And Sunday’s game certainly qualifies as big. The question is whether Cameron Jordan and the rest of a fierce New Orleans defensive front can bully the mercurial quarterback into some of the same mistakes he made in his Wild Card win over the Bears.
He’ll have to out-shoot an artillery captain writing the final chapter of his legacy
Drew Brees’ quest to earn his first-ever NFL MVP award likely fell just short, but he can add another major line to his resume by leading the Saints to their second Super Bowl title. Brees slumped as his season wore on — he averaged just 215 yards per game over his last four starts and recorded a 3:3 touchdown-to-interception ratio in the process — but he’s had plenty of time to recharge in advance of a playoff showdown with the Eagles. He sat out the team’s meaningless Week 17 game against the Panthers and earned a bye through Wild Card weekend, giving him three weeks to figure out how to beat the Eagles.
Philadelphia has plenty of reason to fear Brees. His 74.4 completion percentage this season was a career high, as was a 32:5 TD:INT ratio and his league-high 115.5 QB rating. He’s historically been just as good in the postseason as he’s been in the regular season, too. He’s thrown 29 touchdown passes in 13 playoff games while throwing for more than 320 yards per game. On Saturday he’ll test those bonafides against an Eagles’ passing defense that allowed more passing yards than all but two other teams in the NFL in 2018.
And New Orleans may need every ounce of offense it can glean out of Brees, because a middling defense could be his team’s fatal flaw in 2019.
Can the Saints’ defense live up to the standard its offense set?
New Orleans is loaded with playmakers along its defensive lineup, but the Saints have been underwhelming in 2018. Cameron Jordan and Sheldon Rankins give the club a powerful 1-2 punch up front and Marcus Lattimore leads a solid secondary, but New Orleans has enough holes to make the club’s defense a concern this postseason:
Those deficiencies have contributed to a unit that’s allowed 28+ points five times this season. The good news is one of those games came in Week 17 when the club was resting its starters. And what’s even better for New Orleans is that Brees won three of those contests.
The Eagles will probably have to out-strike the Saints in the playoff game we deserved in 2018
The world was seconds away from a Saints-Eagles NFC Championship showdown last season before a whiffed tackle and some shoddy coverage ended New Orleans’ season and gave the world the Minnesota Miracle.
The Vikings ran that momentum into Philly’s buzzsaw in the conference title game, losing 38-7 in a stunning display of just how cursed the Twin Cities’ football team really is.
That win prevented a Saints-Eagles showdown in Philadelphia that would have pit Foles’ team of destiny against Brees and his recharged offense. That hypothetical matchup promised plenty of points, but instead was deferred to 2018’s regular season where Wentz and the rest of the Philly offense managed to vomit all over itself and little else. But now playoff Nick Foles is back, and we’ll get the chance to see what he can do against the team who was 15 seconds from facing him 51 weeks earlier.
So yeah, Akiem Hicks is pretty strong
— SB Nation NFL (@SBNationNFL) January 6, 2019
: @NFL pic.twitter.com/EiFIS4k1Ku
Sean McVay, folks. #LARams pic.twitter.com/366ysvdIr2
— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) November 5, 2017
Mitch Trubisky Passing 15+ Yds Downfield
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) January 7, 2019
1st half: 2-7, 42 yds
2nd half: 4-5, 120 yds, TD pic.twitter.com/DHxSaRN6p0