On Sunday Philadelphia will be saying goodbye to their fans at Lincoln Financial Field in a game where they could be saying goodbye to the season too.

As curious as it could be the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers will have a reedit of their season opener game in the wild card weekend. Four months later the Eagles will have the opportunity to avenge the 27-20 loss suffered at home against the Packers, and also to advance to the divisional round where the Chicago Bears will be awaiting. That first game of the season was also the scenario where quarterback Kevin Kolb was going to lose his place as a starter for the Eagles to Michael Vick, after suffering a concussion.

That concussion made Vick play from start on Week 2 while Kolb got better, and he didn’t miss the chance to prove head coach Andy Reid who the starter should be, finishing the game against the Detroit Lions with 284 passing yards and two touchdowns in the 35-32 road win. That performance made coach Reid name Vick as the starter quarterback in Week 3 after having practiced all the preseason with Kolb in that role, decision that exposed him to a lot of critics.

We can’t go back in time to find out how high these Eagles could have flown if the preseason plans had been followed through with Kolb as a starter, but what we can tell is that these Eagles have flown high enough with Vick to clinch the NFC East and be the third ranked in the Conference.

The Eagles finished the regular season with a 10-6 record, the same as the NY Giants, but they were favored by the head-to-head win percentage in the tie break. The first of their confrontations was on Week 11 at Philadelphia, and the game ended 27-17 for the Eagles. The second one took place on Week 15 at New York, where Philadelphia won again, this time by 38-31.

Green Bay also appealed to the tie break to clinch a playoff berth, as they were tied 10-6 with the NY Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the fight for the last wild card at steak, since the other one had been taken by the New Orleans Saints and their division had been clinched by Chicago. It was the strength of victory over the Giants and Buccaneers that gave the Packers access to their second playoff appearance in a row.

Against the Eagles they will try to keep the momentum of their 2-win streak going, momentum that made their playoff berth possible, because if it wasn’t for those two victories against Giants and Bears their season would have been called over.

The Packers don’t have Vick in their roster, but with their quarterback Aaron Rodgers they have nothing to envy, as for second season in a row he has averaged a +100 passer rating. He is also just 78 yards away from closing his third consecutive +4000 yards season and is just 2 touchdowns away from the 30 that he threw in 2009.

Both Philadelphia and Green Bay saw how their 2009 NFL season came to an end in the Wild Card Round, exactly where one of them will run with the same luck again while the winner takes Chicago.