One sportswriter predicted that the Philadelphia Eagles of 1962 would host the NFL Championship. In a preseason summary a columnist assessed the main weakness of the club as its ground game. The 1960 Eagles had won the NFL title with a victory over the Green Bay Packers. The 1961 team went as far as playing the Detroit Lions in the runner-up bowl in Miami. However the '62 Philadelphia squad badly underachieved. It finished a disappointing 3-10-1. There were a number of reasons for the Eagles' decline. One of them was their quarterback, Sonny Jurgensen, being unable to equal his great year in 1961, the first in which he had been the club's starter for the entire year.