PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Eagles’ defense turned in one of its best performances of the season on Monday night in the 45-21 win over the Carolina Panthers.

The Eagles focused their wrath on quarterback Cam Newton, who was sacked nine times and accounted for four of five turnovers with three interceptions and a fumble.

But defensive coordinator Bill Davis’ unit will be facing a much bigger challenge than Newton this week when the Eagles travel to Green Bay for an important NFC battle with Aaron Rodgers and the 6-3 Packers.

“These guys are very hot and they’re very hot at home,” Davis said of a Packers offense that has put up 166 points in their four home games this season, all wins.

“Rodgers is playing as well as you’ve ever seen him play. His receivers are catching everything.”

Rodgers leads the league in passing. He has thrown 25 touchdown passes and just three interceptions. He hasn’t thrown an interception at Lambeau Field in 286 attempts dating to December of 2012.

Davis’ unit has played pretty well this season. They have 32 sacks, the second most in the league. They are second to Cleveland in opponent completion percentage (57.2) and 14th in opponent passer rating (90.4).

But they understand there’s a big difference between going up against Kirk Cousins and Austin Davis and Ryan Fitzpatrick and even Cam Newton, and going up against Rodgers.

“It really will be a heck of a test to see where we are as a defense against them,” Davis said. “This is what you want to do. In the NFL, you get to play against the best. That’s the fun part.

“It’s not like you say, ‘Oh, God, we’ve got to go play these guys.’ It’s, ‘Hey, let’s go play these guys. Let’s give them our best. Let’s get their best. And let’s see where we stand at the end of the game.”‘

On the subject of the difference between quarterbacks, the Eagles might be the NFL’s headliner with Mark Sanchez taking over for injured Nick Foles.

It should be noted that Sanchez understood how to prepare for his first start as a replacement quarterback in Philadelphia.

Last Friday, three days before his first start as an Eagle, Sanchez ran wind sprints after practice. He wanted to get in a little extra cardio work to make sure he wouldn’t be huffing and puffing when he ran the Eagles’ tempo offense, which has averaged a play every 22 seconds this season.

“You take on the backup role for a few weeks and you don’t quite get as many reps and then you get thrown into the game,” Sanchez said. “Last week in Houston (after he replaced injured Nick Foles), there were a couple of times where we were chasing the ball after a big play and I was kind of huffing and puffing over there and thinking, ‘Dang, am I out of shape or what?”‘

How fast do the Eagles run their tempo offense? So fast that referee Gene Steratore, whose crew worked the Eagles’ win over Carolina on Monday night, stopped play momentarily once and admitted that the officials weren’t in position for the start of play. You don’t see that very often.

Maybe they should run wind sprints with Sanchez.

NOTES: Among those who practiced Wednesday but were listed on Eagles’ injury report are LBs Mychal Kendricks (calf), TE Brent Celek (ankle), CB Bradley Fletcher (shoulder) and WR Jeff Maehl (foot).