PHILADELPHIA − A.J. Brown was onto something when he was caught on the sidelines reading a book.

The book, by Jim Murphy, was entitled “Inner Excellence.” Brown, the Eagles wide receiver, knows a thing or two about excellence. After all, three straight seasons with at least 1,000 yards receiving certainly speaks to that.

But it also speaks to Brown’s concentration abilities. Imagine how hard it must be to read a book on the sidelines with just about 70,000 fans screaming for the Eagles’ offense to, ahem, turn the page on repeated 3-and-outs.

Or perhaps for quarterback Jalen Hurts to do some reading of his own − for example, the Packers’ defense.

Yet the Eagles did give a textbook example of how to win in the playoffs, no matter how much ugly their 22-10 win over the Green Bay Packers was Sunday in the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs.

Sure, one might surmise that Brown was frustrated that he had just 1 catch for 10 yards. But Brown penned a different narrative.

“No, I was not frustrated at all,” Brown said. “I figure that’s what y’all probably thought. I wasn’t frustrated. Why you always think I’d be frustrated? I like to read.”

Then there’s running back Saquon Barkley, who authored a season for the ages with 2,005 yards rushing, just 101 yards short of an NFL single-season record that he could have gotten had he played in the season finale.

But Barkley had to fight for every one of his 119 yards Sunday, in large part because Hurts was not exactly chapter and verse with the Eagles’ offense. Hurts started off well enough, completing 6 straight passes as the Eagles built a 10-0 lead.

He didn’t complete another pass until the midway point of the third quarter, after seven straight incompletions. Then Hurts completed three in a row − for 28 and 9 yards to DeVonta Smith, then a quick-out to Dallas Goedert, who stiff-armed and dragged a Packers along for a 24-yard touchdown − and the Eagles had a 16-3 lead.

“I know a lot of people will get into stats to see how we did, and if we were rusty, and how did Jalen look,” Barkley said. “In reality, in this locker room, the only thing that matters is winning football games, whether we win 45-44 or 3-0. That’s our mentality, and that’s our mentality for the rest of the playoffs, and we’re going to stick to that.”

In all, Hurts was 13-for-21 for 131 yards and 2 touchdowns.

But there are several chapters to a complete football team. And the Eagles showed that Sunday. Whether it was the special teams unit forcing a fumble on the opening kickoff that Jeremiah Trotter Jr., recovered at the Packers’ 28. That led to the Eagles’ first touchdown on Hurts’ 11-yard pass to Jahan Dotson.

Or a defense that intercepted Packers QB Jordan Love three times, a veritable Love story for a defense that ranked No. 1 in the NFL in yards allowed per game − and a horror story for Love.

Yet Hurts’ play, albeit uneven, was not a work of fiction. After all, Hurts did the one thing Love couldn’t do: avoid turnovers.

And that counts for something, especially in the playoffs. And here, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni went on sort of a James Joyce stream of consciousness to explain, essentially, that Hurts makes the plays that he needs to make without turning the ball over.

“I don’t think we had the game that we wanted to have on offense,” Sirianni said. “But Jalen I think did a lot of good things. First of all, Jalen is a winner. He wins. I mean, no one can argue that … When we take care of the football, the things that happen when we take care of the football, and Jalen’s on this pace of the efficiency that he’s played with this year with his quarterback rating, with his yards per attempt, and all those different things − to be able to do that while also taking care of the football is huge.”

That’s another way of saying Hurts had a passer rating of 111.4 Sunday, and he’s 43-12 as a starter during the regular season going back to when the Eagles were 2-5 in the 2021 season.

No, Hurts won’t win a Nobel Prize for the game he played Sunday. And it doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to realize that Hurts will have to write a better story for the Eagles to keep advancing in the playoffs.

“I’m pretty sure he wishes he could get some plays back,” Brown said about Hurts. “I’m sure we all can say that. But for the most part, he handled the game. He had no turnovers. So we got the win.”

That’s not science fiction, either.

So Brown can hold off on starting an Eagles’ offseason book club as their season of “Great Expectations,” as Charles Dickens once wrote, continues for at least another week.

Contact Martin Frank at [email protected]. Follow on X @Mfranknfl.