“Foles Fever” is Really Nothing New
Brad Goebel.
Bobby
Hoying.
The
Detmer brothers, Ty and Koy.
A.J.
Feeley.
Kevin
Kolb.
And
now, Nick Foles.
I
really don’t understand how people keep going down the
same road, but once again Eagles fans are swooning over a backup quarterback.
Foles wasn’t even the backup
quarterback a few weeks ago.
Maybe guys my age have stopped calling
the sports talk shows. We certainly had our turn at being in love with the guy
who was going to be wearing a baseball cap on the sideline come the regular
season. No doubt older fans smirked at us the way we should be smirking at
those in love with Foles. Maybe we’ve been replaced on the phone lines by guys too
young to remember the laundry list of quarterbacks the Eagles have trotted out
during the preseason who fans couldn’t wait to crown future Pro Bowlers.
I understand that a pocket passer is
like an endangered species in Philadelphia. Ron Jaworski was the last Eagles
quarterback who started for a significant amount of time to fit that description.
The beloved Birds have had a few has-beens or never-was pocket passers go
through town who attempted to fill the role of starting quarterback – Jim
McMahon, Bubby Brister, and a few others who have gleefully slipped my mind.
With every coach since Buddy Ryan
brought in Rich Kotite as offensive coordinator, there has been an insistence
that the organization would run the vaunted “west coast offense.” Yet, not once
in that time has the franchise had a legitimate starting quarterback who could
even come close to actually running that offense properly.
Randall Cunningham.
Donovan McNabb.
And recently, Mike Vick.
Like it or not, those three guys have
been the mainstays at quarterback for almost the last three decades. (Vick may
not qualify as a mainstay yet, but he’s
certainly closer to fitting the description than others who have passed through
town.) All three were known as running quarterbacks, before and, in the case of
Cunningham and McNabb, after they were given the job of running the Eagles west
coast offense. Vick will not break the “after” trend.
In fact, while I freely admit I may be
missing someone, Kevin Kolb was the only guy fitting the description of a
pocket passer who was even brought in to take over as the long-term starting
quarterback – and he was a second round draft pick, not a first round guy.
I’m not even suggesting that the three
mainstays listed above were or are terrible quarterbacks. Used in the right
way, I think Cunningham would have been – and was at times – very, very good.
We never really got to see McNabb play well outside of Philadelphia, so it’s
harder to judge him, but for a long time I thought he would have been better
off in a different system. By the time he got that chance, he was done. I’m not
all that sold on Vick’s passing skills in any system.
So, maybe Eagles fans deserve credit
for rushing to judgement on guys like Foles. They’re desperate for the right
quarterback to be in the system the Eagles have run for almost 30 years.
Foles may even be that guy. As of last
night, NFL.com preseason statistics had the Eagles leading the league in
passing and Foles leads the team in that category. Overall, he was 4th
in the league in passing yards. Also in the top five on that list were Matt
Ryan, Chase Daniel, Andrew Luck, and Russell Wilson. There are fans in New
Orleans and Seattle who couldn’t pick out Daniel and Wilson in a lineup – and
they play for the Saints and Seahawks, respectively.
Preseason stats just don’t mean a damn
thing. Foles basically hasn’t played against a real NFL defense yet. In the
first two games he was playing with and against a lot of guys who will never
even play in a NFL regular season game. Last week, due to a scheduling quirk,
he was playing a team in Cleveland that the Eagles open the season against. So despite
the fact that he started, he wasn’t really going against a typical defense as neither
team wanted to show any more than their basic schemes.
Even if none of that were true, nobody
was ever inducted into the Hall of Fame on the basis of preseason statistics.
Guys don’t even get drafted in fantasy leagues based on their summer stats. These
numbers are forgotten by the Monday before the regular season opens.
Guys my age don’t create twitter
hashtags (unless we have something to promote) much more than we call into
sports talk shows. At least I hope not. But #FolesFever is catching on little
by little with Eagles fans on the social media site.
Odds are good the fever will break
once Vick throws a touchdown pass – in the regular season.
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