Backup QB Foles outduels Brady to lead Eagles to first Super Bowl title.
SUPER BOWL LII Eagles 41, Patriots 33
Philly QB sat most of season but bests Brady toe-to-toe
MINNEAPOLIS — Cast aside once in Philadelphia, Nick Foles delivered the city its first Super Bowl title. He outdueled the great Tom Brady to do it. “Being a part of this and being drafted to Philadelphia, and being fortunate enough to come back and be a part of this team, to be a piece of this puzzle — I mean, it’s been a long time coming, and I know there’s going to be a lot of celebrating tonight,” Foles said.
Foles, who took the job after Carson Wentz injured his right knee in mid-December, matched Brady, the five-time champion and three-time MVP, big play for big play Sunday in
leading the Eagles past New England 41-33.
After an unusually slow start, Brady led the favored Patriots to scores on five of six possessions, but Foles kept right on coming, executing head coach Doug Pederson’s aggressive calls.
“I wasn’t worrying about the scoreboard, I wasn’t worrying about the time, I was just playing ball,” Foles said. “I think sometimes you start worrying about that too much, it starts creeping in your brain. I was just playing, whatever play Doug called, I was just going to go out there and rip it.”
After watching Brady put the Patriots ahead 33-32 with 9:22 left, Foles drove the Eagles 75 yards in 14 plays, hitting tight end Zach Ertz for 11 yards on 3rd-and-7 for the go-ahead TD with 2:21 left.
That drive lasted a tick more than seven minutes and kept Brady cooling his cleats on the sideline while allowing the Eagles’ exhausted defenders to catch their collective breath in a game that featured 1,151 total yards, most in any NFL game in the Super Bowl era.
That meant the world when Brady got the ball back and Brandon Graham jarred the ball loose for the game’s lone sack. Derek Barnett smothered it at the 31 with just more than two minutes remaining, and Jake Elliott’s 46-yard field goal, the longest in a Super Bowl by a rookie, made it an eightpoint cushion.
It also gave Brady just a minute to do his work.
He started at his 9 with 58 seconds remaining and drove the Patriots to midfield before time expired on New England as a desperation pass fell in the end zone.
Foles searched out Brady, but didn’t find him amid the chaos and confetti.
“I didn’t get to see Tom. I was looking for Tom. It got pretty crazy really fast,” Foles said. “I mean, he’s one of the greatest of all time. He’s been unbelievable. He was unbelievable tonight. I can’t say enough about him.”
Brady threw for more yards, a playoff-career-high 505 to Foles’ 373, but Foles matched Brady’s three touchdown passes and caught another.
He hauled in tight end Trey Burton’s toss from the 1 that gave Philadelphia a 22-12 halftime edge and made him the first player in Super Bowl history to be on both ends of a touchdown pass in the same game. Brady nearly beat him to it. Although wide open, the ambling QB couldn’t quite haul in receiver Danny Amendola’s high pass for what would have been a nifty overthe-shoulder reception that might have gone all 35 yards for the score.
A third-round pick by former Philadelphia head coach Andy Reid in 2012, Foles had a lot of success as a starter under Chip Kelly his sophomore season. He threw 29 TD passes and two picks in 11 starts, including the playoffs, in 2013. Foles posted a passer rating of 119.2, third-highest in league history. He tied an NFL record with seven TD passes in a game at the Oakland Coliseum in November 2013 and won an offensive MVP award at a Pro Bowl.
Foles was traded to St. Louis for Sam Bradford in March 2015. Foles lost his starting job to Case Keenum and asked for his release after Jared Goff was drafted No. 1 overall when the Rams relocated to Los Angeles. Foles considered hanging up his cleats before Reid persuaded him to go to Kansas City to be Alex Smith’s backup.
“As people, we deal with struggles and that was a moment in my life where I thought about it. I prayed about it,” Foles said of quitting. “And I’m grateful that I made a decision to come back and play.”