Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Rusty Foles will try to get reps against Cowboys
PHILADELPHIA » Doug Pederson did as every football coach everywhere proclaims to be the top priority not only in the job but in life... He watched the film. And what he saw there sometime in the morning hours of Tuesday convinced him of what step to take next, what all-important tact to take in what essentially will be a nearly threeweek buildup to the Eagles’ next all-important game.
And no, we’re not talking about the Dallas Cowboys anymore.
The mission, as even Pederson would choose to accept it, is to give the Eagles every chance conceivable of winning in the postseason ... or at least winning playoff game No. 1.
That will come during the weekend of Jan. 13-14, when the Eagles will host the lowest-seeded survivor of the prior weekend’s wild card round. Pederson will, of course, prepare as any good or even middling head coach would, by following the old “one game at a time” mandate. So he will profess to be thinking about nothing but playing the Cowboys on New Year’s Eve, in what may be the most boring edition of that divisional rivalry ever played.
The Eagles are in. Own the top seed and bye and every other perk that comes with it.
The Cowboys are out. Delayed during a regular season dominated by Ezekiel Elliott’s domestic abuse charges that eventually led to a six-game suspension and put the Cowboys in a position from which they couldn’t recover, their chances have been slayed until next year.
Sure, the teams still hate each other and all that, but they know there’s nothing to play for here, bragging rights having long ago turned into a charming notion of the past. You know, like tackling.
So in his weekly day-after press conference Tuesday, Pederson began tackling the little issue of psychological preparation. Whether it’s a nothing Sunday season finale against the Cowboys or a week of pre-bye practices or finally the first (and, he hopes, not the final) playoff game of 2018, that head-game mission has to start with his starting quarterback.
“Listen, number one, it’s not about one person,” Pederson asserted while talking about Nick Foles. “There’s enough to go around offensively. Obviously the quarterback is the focal point because he touches the ball every snap. There’s enough to go around offensively to make the corrections and to get better.
“Everything is fixable, and everything is correctable. He’ll learn from it. We’ll learn from it.”
In other words, Nick Foles wasn’t good against the Raiders Sunday night. A lot of what the Eagles did in that game wasn’t good, especially the work of the offense, with Foles appearing particularly off his game.
He completed just half of his 38 pass attempts for 163 yards, with one touchdown and one interception. Or, as Foles put it after the game, “I didn’t play good enough. I have to play cleaner and, obviously, play better.”
That he’s playing after not having played much for so long is a problem that isn’t easily overcome. Pederson and the Eagles have no choice but to put all faith in Foles, because Carson Wentz’s knee injury happened too late to give them any viable alternatives.
Playing Nate Sudfeld, better known as the guy behind Foles, is something Pederson might try against the Cowboys, but if so it isn’t likely to be as a starter. While some reason Foles should be held out because any chance of exposing him to injury would mean putting whatever playoff hopes the Eagles have at immediate risk, it should be obvious to anyone watching that Foles as currently consistituted is a work in progress at best.
“If that’s the approach, then I would have rested him (Sunday) night, quite honestly,” Pederson said about the fear of injury to Foles. “I can’t worry about that. I’ve got to play and get him as many reps as he can, and then be smart about it.”
Foles has had two starts for the Eagles this season, or one more than he had for Kansas City in all of 2016. He played regularly for the St. Louis Rams only early in 2015, winding up with 11 games in a season disrupted by a concussion and a battle for starting status with quarterback Case Keenum. The prior season, Foles was about halfway through the Eagles’ schedule when a broken collarbone ended his season.
So he hasn’t put in anything resembling a full season since 2013, the year he played his lone career playoff game, a last-minute Eagles loss to New Orleans.
Don’t bet these Eagles want to see Drew Brees and Co. this time around in the postseason. But that’s out of their control.
What they’d like to see is a Nick Foles that’s at least a semblance of the quarterback he was four years ago. But the impact of his lack of playing time in recent seasons and a late-summer elbow injury which forced him to miss much of training camp and all four preseason games is evident.
So Pederson will do as he must, play Foles against the Cowboys in a continuing attempt to get him up to some semblance of speed.
Part of that prep time will be spent on the quarterback’s head, too, which is why the campaign to divert attention from Foles’ inadequacies kicked into high gear at this Tuesday press conference.
“A lot of the plays that Carson makes are just his God-given ability to run and to make plays with his legs,” Pederson said. “It does help you out to make big plays that way. But Nick has the ability to make big plays through the air. Believe it or not, he is pretty efficient when he is out of the pocket in finding receivers and guys down the field.
“We’re going to continue to run the offense the way we have all season. We just have to get better execution.”