Nick Foles believes the Philadelphia Eagles have some work to do to get rid of some of the predictability on offense. (Photo by Andy Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Nick Foles knows the Philadelphia Eagles have a lot to clean up.
The Eagles may be 3-0, but they haven’t exactly looked impressive in doing so. The defending Super Bowl champions narrowly defeated the Los Angeles Rams after overcoming a 26-7 deficit and a sluggish start. It took a block on a game-winning field goal attempt with time expiring to seal the win for Philadelphia.
“I think they’re finding ways to win,” says Foles in a one-on-one interview. “I don’t think they’re winning in the way that they really want to, but they’re winning — that’s super important. It’s always about winning the games. It is hard to win in the NFL, and there’s always going to be talking heads out there that have an opinion on this or that. I mean blocking a field goal, a game-winning field goal that should be a chip shot, and then just insult to injury, taking it all the way back and scoring a touchdown.”
The former Super Bowl MVP and Eagles hero gives credit to his former team, saying that’s what makes them “so dangerous.”
“Jordan Davis at the end, he has some wheels,” says Foles. “I know they’ve been talking about how he lost 26 pounds throughout the off season, so he had an amazing game. Just messed up everything for the Rams, and the Rams look good. It’s just showing the Eagles can win the game in so many different ways, and everyone knows that. But that’s what makes them so dangerous.”
Nick Foles Provides Solution On How Eagles Can Be More Efficient On Offense
Jalen Hurts ended up going off in the second half, finishing the game with 226 passing yards and three touchdowns. However, he had just 17 passing yards at the end of the first half. Entering the game, he was averaging less than 120 passing yards per game.
“The thing I would like to see from them as an offense is just being more cohesive with their type of plays, making things look more similar to where you can’t key when they’re passing and running, and a little bit more dynamic in the passing attack,” says Foles. “These are things they know, but just from an ex-player, that’s something that it was nice to see them pass in the second half well. It is the first couple of games, they’ve struggled with finding their passing game, accompanied with their running game, so once they figure out that on offense, they’re going to be really hard to beat.”
Foles makes an interesting observation where he notices that when the Eagles are running the football, they tend to have two tight ends on the field. When they go for a drop back pass, they have one tight end on the field. It leads to predictability and it may be a reason why the Eagles have struggled on offense so far this season.
“My hope is they go back and they’re game planning, they’re looking at their tendencies, and there’s obviously a key when they’re running and passing based on personnel on the field, whether it’s two tight ends and they’re running, and then they take a tight end off and they’re passing, and it’s just drop back pass,” says Foles. “The great offense is everything looks sort of similar, and you sort of key off it, because they are great at running the football. “
The Eagles currently rank 29th in passing yards and 13th in rushing yards. They’re 25th in pass yards per attempt and 24th in rush yards per attempt — which is obviously not at the level an elite team wants to be at.
“They should be really great at play action passes where there’s a lot of air in the secondary, because the only way to stop a running offense is to load the box and have more people closer to the line of scrimmage, which makes the secondary a lot lighter,” says Foles. “There’s a lot more space in the secondary, not as many people. They have the receivers to do it, they have the tight ends to do it, they have the skill position.
“For me, it’s just what is the Eagles offense? It seems like there’s too many different parts of here’s how we run the ball, but then we pass it and it doesn’t marry,” Foles continues to say. “Once that marriage between the two (happens), makes it very difficult for a defense to key on their tendencies.”
The Eagles will look to clean up their offensive play as they travel to Tampa to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a matchup of unbeatens. Philadelphia has lost in Tampa in each of the past two seasons, including in the playoffs during the 2023 season and during the regular season last year.
Nick Foles Teams Up With ESPN Fantasy Football For Their IBM Features
Foles last played in the NFL during the 2022 season and officially retired just prior to the start of the 2024 season. The longtime quarterback now has a lot more time on his hands, which is why he’s partnering with IBM when it comes to their features in ESPN’s fantasy football leagues.
IBM utilizes AI technologies from watsonx that gives more insight for fantasy football users to pick up and use the right players.
Foles says this is also really big for his podcast, where he talks fantasy football along with betting, which is obviously big these days among football fans.
“This is a newer partnership,” says Foles. “This is more getting me involved in fantasy football. I really like using AI with everything I do, whether it’s Bible study, whether it’s my dad’s season business, whether it’s my season podcast. It’s something that I utilize to gather information and then fact check information. It’s something that really intrigues me at the beginning of me getting into fantasy football.
“When I played, never focused on fantasy football,” Foles continues to say. “Didn’t worry about it, didn’t even know what spreads were in games where people were like, ‘It’s a six-and-a-half point spread this.’. Now that I’m outside it, it’s the things that fans love to talk about.”