Eagles-Packers opener: Jalen Hurts vs. Jordan Love and new coordinators bring Friday night intrigue to Brazil

After months of speculation, the Eagles’ opponent in their Week 1 game on Sept. 6 in São Paulo, Brazil, has been revealed.

The Eagles will take on the Green Bay Packers at Corinthians Arena in a matchup featuring a pair of 2023 NFC playoff teams.

The season opener is typically a must-watch for any Eagles fan, but here are four more factors that give this game added layers of intrigue:

The season opener between the Eagles and the Packers will mark the first NFL game played in South America. In 2007, the NFL focused its international marketing efforts in London through the International Series games. But those efforts have expanded over the last decade, as the NFL introduced games in Mexico, Germany, and now Brazil.

At the NFL’s annual meeting in March, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie discussed the importance of international games as a means of facilitating the league’s aspiration to grow among new audiences.

“So proud to be an ambassador for the NFL,” Lurie said. “I think it’s America’s most incredible potential export. Most things in America that are really popular become extremely popular globally. The NFL hasn’t yet. It’s about to have a chance to be. And so to be a part of that, to represent a really good football team that’s exciting to watch, I think will be great for Brazil and South America and for the public to see down there.”

» READ MORE: The NFL wants to rule the world. Jeffrey Lurie is happy to have the Eagles help.

If you like talented, young quarterbacks, this game will be a must-watch.

No, quarterbacks don’t go toe-to-toe on the field at the same time. But there will be something special about watching Jalen Hurts- and Jordan Love-led offenses perform in prime time on the international stage.

Both Love and Hurts are members of the 2020 draft class. The Packers selected Love in the first round, No. 26 overall out of Utah State. He was one of four quarterbacks picked before Hurts.

Since then, they’ve both exceeded initial expectations. Love faced plenty of skepticism as the heir apparent to Aaron Rodgers. But he excelled in his first season as the starter in 2023, racking up 4,159 passing yards (No. 7 in the league) and 32 passing touchdowns (No. 2). Hurts, drafted in the second round in 2020, was viewed as the backup to Carson Wentz. He’s now the franchise quarterback.

Plus, there’s some significant recent history for Love against the Eagles. Love last played the Eagles in the 2022 season at the Linc in Week 12, entering the game in relief of an injured Rodgers. He had his best performance to date at the time, completing six passes for 113 yards and a touchdown (146.8 passer rating).

Although the Packers lost, that performance gave a glimpse into the future of what Love as a starter could look like. That offseason, the Packers traded Rodgers to the New York Jets and Love took the reins.

Regardless of whether the Week 1 game was going to be played in Philadelphia or in São Paulo, all eyes would have been on offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and defensive coordinator Vic Fangio in their Eagles debuts.

Training camp will give some insight into what to expect from the new coordinators, but the public will learn more about their offensive and defensive schemes once the regular season begins. Packers coach Matt LaFleur has already made it known how he feels about Fangio. When asked which coach’s defense is the most difficult to read and attack in a 2019 interview with ESPN, LaFleur responded with Fangio and his scheme.

“Just the fronts and the multiple looks you get from him,” LaFleur said. “That’s incredibly difficult. Shoot, Indianapolis last year we knew exactly what they were going to do to us and we didn’t have a lot of success because they were so sound. They stuffed the run out of a two-safety defense and played extremely fast.”

The Packers will also debut their new defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, who replaces Joe Barry after a three-year stint in Green Bay. Hafley, who hails from Montvale, N.J., spent the last four years as Boston College’s head coach.

The Eagles-Packers matchup will be the 13th game to take place on a Friday since the NFL and AFL merged in 1970. Friday games are becoming more commonplace now that the league introduced the Black Friday game last season, starting with a contest between the Jets and the Miami Dolphins.

Few NFL games have taken place on a Friday in the last 60-plus years because of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The law forbids professional football leagues from broadcasting their games on Friday after 6 p.m. and Saturday within 75 miles of their game sites to avoid direct competition with high school and college football games. It applies from the second Friday in September to the second Saturday in December.

The Week 1 game in 2024 falls on the first Friday in September, avoiding any potential conflict with the law.