Eagles vs Packers: Two storied franchises, six unforgettable tales

1. The Eagles topple Vince Lombardi’s Packers to win the NFL Championship.

The Eagles/Packers feud wasn’t much of a rivalry in the 1930s… or the 1940s… or even the 1950s or 1960s… Truthfully, it wasn’t much of a battle at all.

Green Bay won the first nine meetings and 17 of the first 20 from 1933 to 1976. Philly wasn’t able to brag about consecutive wins in the series until 1979.

No one knows what got into the Eagles one day after Christmas in 1960, but thank goodness it did. They beat Green Bay when it counted, toppling Vince Lombardi’s Packers in the NFL Championship Game as ‘Concrete Charlie’, Chuck Bednarik tackled Jim Taylor at the Eagles’ eight-yard line as time expired to preserve a 17-13 win and give Philly its third championship in franchise history.

In the process, Bednarik became the only Eagles star to win two championships during two different eras (1949 and 1960). The Packers’ loss doubled as the lone postseason loss of Lombardi’s head-coaching career. His team went on to win five World Championships in a seven-year span. That feat still remains unmatched in NFL history. Still, Philadelphia’s championship-winning victory will never be forgotten, nor should it, especially because it helped steady the ship to some degree.

The Eagles would lose three consecutive games to The Pack from 1962 to 1970, but from 1974 until 2020, they won more than half of their 27 meetings, 15 to be exact. They still have a lot of work to do to battle their way back to .500 versus their extended rivals from Wisconsin. Trust us. They’re working on it, but even though their next meeting most certainly won’t be their last, you’d be wise not to miss it.

After all, whenever these two meet as you’ve no doubt seen here, you never know when they’ll re-write the NFL’s history books. That’s just what they do when they meet up to play a football game.