Foles Discussion

[dll2000]

Positives:

We don’t need a great QB to vastly improve this team.  

Foles is smart.

Teammates around league say they love Foles.  They will play hard for him. 

Foles has a nice touch on deep balls.  Teams do not have to defend the whole field against MT.  

Foles is very good at RPO reads and personnel is set up very nicely for RPOs.

Nagy will open up his playbook and expand his game plans under Foles in ways he would never do with Mitch.  They can be team specific rather than just plays MT is capable of running.   I think this is huge.  

Foles is capable of changing a play into sometime better if defense is showing its hand.   I watched Rodgers and Saints and Rodgers changed play twice and NO changed defense twice before clock forced Rodgers to run play.   It was a very interesting chess match.   We saw some of that for first time in 3 years.    That’s with a shortened off season and split reps in camps and no reps since MT named starter.

He can get on very hot streaks (but see below).

Negatives:

He stands very tall in pocket and will take nasty hits to deliver deep balls.  He already did that in limited game reps.   

He is not very mobile.

Those two things mean his chances of injury are very high.

He can go on streaks where he is not accurate and plays very poorly for long stretches.  Entire games.  Multiple games in a row.  He can be a streaky player for good or ill.

—————-

Way back last fall when we were playing like garbage a lot of us were speculating on QB fits and Foles name came up quite a bit.  I still think that is the case.   He is a nice fit for this system and this team.  

I think if we can get lucky on him staying healthy we can win some games with Foles and we are better off this season with him at helm.  

 

 

[dafreak]

2 hours ago, dll2000 said:

Positives:

We don’t need a great QB to vastly improve this team.  

Foles is smart.

Teammates around league say they love Foles.  They will play hard for him. 

Foles has a nice touch on deep balls.  Teams do not have to defend the whole field against MT.  

Foles is very good at RPO reads and personnel is set up very nicely for RPOs.

Nagy will open up his playbook and expand his game plans under Foles in ways he would never do with Mitch.  They can be team specific rather than just plays MT is capable of running.   I think this is huge.  

Foles is capable of changing a play into sometime better if defense is showing its hand.   I watched Rodgers and Saints and Rodgers changed play twice and NO changed defense twice before clock forced Rodgers to run play.   It was a very interesting chess match.   We saw some of that for first time in 3 years.    That’s with a shortened off season and split reps in camps and no reps since MT named starter.

He can get on very hot streaks (but see below).

Negatives:

He stands very tall in pocket and will take nasty hits to deliver deep balls.  He already did that in limited game reps.   

He is not very mobile.

Those two things mean his chances of injury are very high.

He can go on streaks where he is not accurate and plays very poorly for long stretches.  Entire games.  Multiple games in a row.  He can be a streaky player for good or ill.

—————-

Way back last fall when we were playing like garbage a lot of us were speculating on QB fits and Foles name came up quite a bit.  I still think that is the case.   He is a nice fit for this system and this team.  

I think if we can get lucky on him staying healthy we can win some games with Foles and we are better off this season with him at helm.  

 

 

Agree we are better off with Foles but what is the realistic outcome of having him as the starter? Can he get us to the playoffs? A playoff win? Super Bowl? A Super Bowl win? At what point is the higher draft pick more valuable?

[Heinz D.]

35 minutes ago, dafreak said:

Agree we are better off with Foles but what is the realistic outcome of having him as the starter? Can he get us to the playoffs? A playoff win? Super Bowl? A Super Bowl win? At what point is the higher draft pick more valuable?

Are you asking if the Bears should try to win the Super Bowl, or go for a higher draft slot with which to select a new QB? 

Weird.

IMO, the "realistic outcome" of having Foles as the starter is that the Bears can win the Super Bowl. We all saw this on Sunday. 

I can get into that assertion more deeply, if need be. 

[dafreak]

48 minutes ago, Heinz D. said:

Are you asking if the Bears should try to win the Super Bowl, or go for a higher draft slot with which to select a new QB? 

Weird.

IMO, the "realistic outcome" of having Foles as the starter is that the Bears can win the Super Bowl. We all saw this on Sunday. 

I can get into that assertion more deeply, if need be. 

I do not think the Bears are a Super Bowl contending team with Foles and neither does the coaching staff. Playoffs perhaps, Super Bowl no. 

[blkwdw13]

My quick take on Foles, he didn't look any better than Trubisky until he hit Ginn on that 4th down play then played outstanding for the rest of the game. I'm going to say this is because he has gotten almost now reps with the first team once the season started and he out of sync with everyone. I want to see how he settles in with him getting those reps now.

[Pool]

He had two horrible throws that luckily weren't picked. SB contenders with him under center? I don't think so. Yet he is a big improvement from Mitch. 

[JAF-N72EX]

5 hours ago, dll2000 said:

Foles is smart.

So is Trubisky. He just can't put together for a full season. 

5 hours ago, dll2000 said:

Teammates around league say they love Foles.  They will play hard for him. 

By all accounts, Mitch's teammates feel the same way about him. During the game the camera panned over to Mitch and you saw someone (can't remember who) go up and give Mitch a hug while he has standing by the bench.  

Fans are acting as if Foles is the savior.  We'll see how this goes.  This situation reminds me too much of the Rex and Orton/Griese debacle. 

[dll2000]

12 hours ago, dafreak said:

Agree we are better off with Foles but what is the realistic outcome of having him as the starter? Can he get us to the playoffs? A playoff win? Super Bowl? A Super Bowl win? At what point is the higher draft pick more valuable?

Realistically every team is at least a ten point dog to KC in Super Bowl at this point.

A chip and a chair though.  Try to win every game and see what happens.   Draft where you draft.  We are already out of running for top 2 QBs.  

[WindyCity]

8 hours ago, JAF-N72EX said:

So is Trubisky. He just can't put together for a full season. 

By all accounts, Mitch's teammates feel the same way about him. During the game the camera panned over to Mitch and you saw someone (can't remember who) go up and give Mitch a hug while he has standing by the bench.  

Fans are acting as if Foles is the savior.  We'll see how this goes.  This situation reminds me too much of the Rex and Orton/Griese debacle. 

Mitch struggles to read the field, at this point I think that can be written in pen.

At a minimum Foles will do more with pre-snap reads. He did on Sunday, multiple players commented on it.

[BEAR FACE DOWN ARROW]

Yep.  We're getting to see what a base line functional Nagy offense looks like.  Foles had the magic of coming in without anyone prepping for him, don't expect 5TD 3Td halfs ever time, and I wouldn't expect him to have many big heroic runs. I do expect him to do a better job of taking what the defense offers and getting the ball into the right hands.

 

On another thread there is a stat on how the Bears are quite poor in WR separation, but it only  measures seperation at the time of the catch, which in our case has directly reflected Mitch's worst trait (seeing the open play, not throwing into coverage) so context matters. I bet that number gets a lot better as Foles won't be missing the open guy as often.  I will miss the occasional flashes Mitch had where he would Frogger his way around the pocket like Rodgers and then make a play, rare as they were. I don't think Foles is going to be pulling those off!

[soulman]

Now that the Bears have made their move at QB, which Nick Foles will they get?

Dan Wetzel

·Columnist

Mon, September 28, 2020, 11:08 AM MDT

https://sports.yahoo.com/now-that-the-bears-have-made-their-move-at-qb-which-nick-foles-will-they-get-170855567.html

 

With two minutes remaining and his Chicago Bears trailing Atlanta by three, Nick Foles lined up at the Falcons’ 28-yard line and read an all-out blitz coming. He immediately audibled to deal with the coming pressure — Atlanta would indeed rush six. 

Only there was a twist. Just prior to the play, during the two-minute warning timeout, Foles told receiver Anthony Miller that if a checkout came, Miller should run a simple route.

“Get to the ‘L’,” Foles said, meaning the “L” in “ATL” painted in the Falcons’ end zone. The pass would arrive there. 

“And it’ll be a pretty stiff ball,” Foles warned. 

Miller did as he was told, running a designed-on-the-fly backyard-football route. As he arrived at the L, so did the ball, launched by Foles just a fraction of a second before he was buried by linebacker Mykal Walker. 

Miller caught it, Chicago took a 30-26 lead it wouldn’t relinquish and the Legend of Nick Foles got itself another chapter. 

“That’s a fun way to win a game,” Foles said.

Nick Foles has shown flashes of special play, but he's also been wildly inconsistent. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Foles will start Sunday against Indianapolis, according to coach Matt Nagy, which will make Chicago the fifth NFL team he has started a game for, and that includes two stints in Philadelphia. He relieved a struggling Mitchell Trubisky in the third quarter against Atlanta and promptly turned a 23-10 hole into a Chicago victory, bringing the Bears to an unlikely 3-0 on the season. 

The Trubisky benching was deserved and also lightning quick, which suggests Nagy may have been eager to move on from the former No. 2 overall pick despite winning the season’s first two games. Foles was probably always the inevitable plan this year. That they got to him while remaining undefeated is a bonus.

Now the question is: What do Foles and Chicago do with it?

There are few NFL careers more confounding than the one Foles is rolling through. He was named Super Bowl MVP after outdueling Tom Brady in Philly’s classic upset three seasons ago in a game where he delivered 373 yards and three touchdown passes and one “Philly Special” touchdown receiving. 

He made a Pro Bowl in 2013, throwing seven scores in one game that season, and he routinely pulls off plays like “Get to the ‘L’” that you’d expect from Patrick Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers.

Yet across nine seasons with five teams (Philly, Kansas City, St. Louis, Jacksonville and Chicago) he has never seized control of a starting job, either because of inaccuracy, turnovers or injuries. For every burst of magic, there is the return to the mean that suggests he’s nothing more than a very capable backup. Teams tend to want him, then not so much. He has been traded three times, always as part of some mid-to-late-round draft swaps.

After the 2015 season in St. Louis, where he completed just 56.4 percent of his passes and threw more interceptions (10) than touchdowns (7), he strongly considered retiring and finding a new profession.

Football was no longer fun. It certainly had never been easy. He played high school ball in Texas but the local schools showed little interest. He went to Michigan State but couldn’t crack the lineup. He transferred to Arizona and wound up drafted in the third round. He was just a bad QB with no guarantees for the future. 

He went fishing, prayed on it and decided to give it another crack. A year in Kansas City led to a return to Philly and that improbable Super Bowl playoff run. 

Since then, he has lost starting QB battles to Carson Wentz, Gardner Minshew and, just a month ago, Trubisky. 

So who is the real Nick Foles, as he returns with another golden opportunity to show the league that he is more than just its most famous mop-up guy? When you start 3-0 — no matter how you start 3-0 — you have an inside track on the playoffs, especially as they’ve expanded this season. Chicago should be thinking big.

Foles will have to be a lot better than he was against Atlanta. Winning tends to smooth everything over, but he was just 16-of-29 for 188 yards. There were three touchdowns, against one pick, and that brilliant audible that comes from Foles’ deep confidence, but the warning light should still be flashing. 

Foles’ accuracy has long been a problem — a career 61.8 completion percentage. So has his touchdowns-to-interception ratio — 74 to 36. He tends to get banged up often and struggles once defensive coordinators can plan for him. 

Still, he’s the kind of guy who subs in and switches the offense on the biggest play of the game. He’s the back-up who spent the fourth quarter walking up and down the Bears sideline reminding everyone that the comeback was possible (and his teammates believed him).

“It’s one play at a time …” Foles said afterward.

That’s Nick Foles at his best, always believing even in the face of doubt, deficits and a blitz. And so now comes one more time for an opportunity to prove he is more than a guy who is so great when little is expected, only to be so befuddling when a lot is. 

In his sixth starting stint with his fifth team, can Nick Foles be special in Chicago?

[dll2000]

10 hours ago, JAF-N72EX said:

So is Trubisky. He just can't put together for a full season. 

By all accounts, Mitch's teammates feel the same way about him. During the game the camera panned over to Mitch and you saw someone (can't remember who) go up and give Mitch a hug while he has standing by the bench.  

Fans are acting as if Foles is the savior.  We'll see how this goes.  This situation reminds me too much of the Rex and Orton/Griese debacle. 

1. Mitch is a smart human.  Evidence that he is a smart football player is simply not there.   It's year 4 and we still have a limited playbook?  Common.   Even most recent game shows that.   Foles has been here, what 2 months AND had to split time AND then had time reduced to zero?  

2. Mitch is likable.  Foles being likable doesn't add or detract from that.  I think Foles is likely to be a better leader for simple fact that he has shown to be a better player. 

3. I don't see fans acting like Foles is a savior.  I think Bears have a lot of talent and having improved QB play would go a long way to making them a better team.

...

Mitch has shown he is clearly better than Daniel and Daniel has had made millions as a back up QB.   Don't go feeling too sorry for MT.

 

[soulman]

14 hours ago, dafreak said:

Agree we are better off with Foles but what is the realistic outcome of having him as the starter? Can he get us to the playoffs? A playoff win? Super Bowl? A Super Bowl win? At what point is the higher draft pick more valuable?

How valuable has having had the 2nd overall pick (via trade no less) in the 2017 draft been?  Unless we stopped winning games right now to finish 3-13 we won't get a shot at one of the top one or two QBs anyway.  So any talk of playing for a higher draft pick vs a better record and some playoff success isn't gonna go far I'm afraid.

Your other questions can't really be answered yet.

What we do know is Foles has in the short term led his team to and one a SB against Belichick and his GOAT QB.  That's something but whether Foles can put together an entire season of that kind of play we don't know.  But what we do know is Mitch can't seem to do it so what do we have to lose?  It's Foles team now.

[soulman]

13 hours ago, dafreak said:

I do not think the Bears are a Super Bowl contending team with Foles and neither does the coaching staff. Playoffs perhaps, Super Bowl no. 

Now that I can agree with.  It would take a minor miracle like Rodgers being lost for the season for us to even win the NFCN.  The God's honest truth is we still aren't as good as the Packers.  They probably have an inside track to an NFC Championship and if we can't beat them in the regular season to win the NFCN we're not likely to do it in the playoffs either.  That's as straight forward as it gets.

[topwop1]

12 minutes ago, dll2000 said:

1. Mitch is a smart human.  Evidence that he is a smart football player is simply not there.   It's year 4 and we still have a limited playbook?  Common.   Even most recent game shows that.   Foles has been here, what 2 months AND had to split time AND then had time reduced to zero?  

2. Mitch is likable.  Foles being likable doesn't add or detract from that.  I think Foles is likely to be a better leader for simple fact that he has shown to be a better player. 

3. I don't see fans acting like Foles is a savior.  I think Bears have a lot of talent and having improved QB play would go a long way to making them a better team.

...

Mitch has shown he is clearly better than Daniel and Daniel has had made millions as a back up QB.   Don't go feeling too sorry for MT.

 

The only reason I'lll ever really feel sorry for him is because he got drafted ahead of a future HOF in Patty Mahomes and possibly two depending on how Watson's career goes and (unless he turns his career around) he will always be a draft bust punchline. 

People really shouldn't be making fun of the guy because it's not fair to him that he had those lofty expectations put on him but I guess it comes with the territory.