The Eagles’ victory over the Packers was weird in a lot of ways. Here’s what that odd stuff means.

There was a lot that was strange or unfamiliar about the Eagles’ 34-29 victory over the Packers. In listing all the night’s oddities, you don’t even have to include the day of the week (Friday), the setting (Brazil), or the footing of the Corinthians Arena field (lousy, and comical if it hadn’t been so dangerous to the players). It was an unusual game in a few ways specific to the Eagles, and if these opening-night revelations turn into season-long trends, a team that already entered Week 1 with plenty of mystery around it will become even more intriguing.

Anyone who has spent any significant time following the Eagles or the NFL in general over the last 20 years knows how funky it felt for me to type this next sentence: The Eagles won Friday night in large part because they got outstanding performances from a running back and a linebacker.

That sentence, though, is accurate. Barkley rushed for 109 yards, caught two passes, and scored three touchdowns. And Baun, whom the Eagles signed in February presumably to play mostly special teams and add depth at linebacker, had a monster night: 15 combined tackles, 11 solo tackles, two sacks, and one tackle for a loss. Good luck finding a better offense-defense combo debut in recent franchise history.

It’s no secret that the Eagles, throughout most of Jeffrey Lurie’s tenure as owner and Howie Roseman’s tenure as their player personnel chief, haven’t allocated the financial (and often draft-related) resources to running back and linebacker that they have to other positions. While they’ve used second-round picks on LeSean McCoy and Miles Sanders, they’ve been reluctant to overspend at tailback, which — given the fungibility of the position — has generally been a smart way to go. As for linebacker, they still haven’t drafted one in the first round since Jerry Robinson in 1979, and they’ve tried, for the most part, to get by with stopgap vets and mid-round draft picks in the hope that they hit on a low-risk, high-reward acquisition.

Barkley represents a break from the Eagles’ thinking about running backs: They believed him to be an outlier, so talented that he was worth relatively big money. So they signed him for three years at a price tag that reportedly could be worth close to $38 million. Baun, at least after one game, represents the best-case scenario for the Eagles’ thinking about linebackers: In four seasons with the New Orleans Saints, he had started just 14 games and collected just two sacks — the same number he had Friday. Low risk. Big-time reward so far.

If there was any question that Fangio was going to deploy the defense in the manner he saw fit — regardless of where the Eagles drafted a particular player or how much they paid him — the snap count from Friday’s game went a long way to dispelling such doubts. Baun, Darius Slay, and Reed Blankenship played all 67 snaps. Jordan Davis got just seven more snaps (35) than Milton Williams (28). And Brandon Graham, who is 36 and in his 15th season, saw more action (32 snaps) than Bryce Huff (30 snaps), to whom the Eagles will pay as much as $51 million over the next three years.

My colleagues Jeff McLane and Marcus Hayes already have detailed Jalen Hurts’ inconsistency against the Packers: the three turnovers, the questionable decision-making, the beautiful touchdown passes to Barkley and A.J. Brown, all of it. Hurts also rushed for 33 yards on 13 carries, and with the exception of a late tuck-and-dash in which he used his 600-pound-squatting legs to surge for an important first down, he didn’t appear much faster or more dynamic than he did last season, if at all.

This aspect of his play deserves close attention. During Lurie’s tenure, the Eagles’ franchise quarterbacks — McNabb, Michael Vick, Carson Wentz, and Hurts — have had one primary trait in common: At their best, all of them were dual threats, able to beat defenses by throwing and running. McNabb’s pocket-passing skills improved to the point that he could thrive even when he didn’t scramble so frequently, but once Vick and Wentz, through injuries and age, weren’t so mobile, their entire games were diminished. Hurts’ was in 2023, too. In that regard, Friday wasn’t a great sign.