Philadelphia Eagles press reset on QB carousel

Here we are back where we started... With Nick Foles declared the starter for this weekend's game against the Raiders, the Eagles have pressed the reset button on their QB situation and Foles finds that he gets a rare do-over in his quest to take the starting job from Michael Vick.

The veteran Vick was the deserved winner of the job after outplaying Foles in preseason, but in typical Vick style was injured in week 5 giving his 2nd year challenger a legit opening to seize the starting job. Foles looked like he was going to do just that with a spectacular 4 TD performance against Tampa Bay that saw him named NFC player of the week. However, Foles followed that up with a disastrous performance in week 7 against Dallas where he completed just 38% of his passes and was knocked out with a concussion.

It seemed as though the Nick Foles era had come and went. In week 8, with Foles out the Eagles rushed back Michael Vick, but he looked ineffective before re-injuring his hamstring in a loss to the Giants. Matt Barkley, who replaced Foles and Vick in successive weeks looked decidedly unimpressive.

So now we find ourselves in much the same place as we did in week 6. Nick Foles is back and likely has yet another shot to seize the starting job. The fact that Vick is on just a one year deal and is once again dealing with injuries means Foles has as good a shot to remain as the team's starter now as he did after the start in Tampa Bay. All it's going to take is some consistency.

I commented in a thread the other day that I'm interested in seeing the real Nick Foles. His two performances this year really could not be more different. He was excellent on the road against a good Tampa Bay defense. The following week, the only thing worse than his showing at home against a poor defense in Dallas was probably Matt Barkley's...

Reality is, Foles has to be somewhere in between those two extreme performances. If the real Nick Foles leans more toward the Tampa Foles, then I would bet that he'll see out the year as starter whether Michael Vick is healthy or not. If he's more the Dallas Foles, then I think this circle of going back to Vick and hoping he can stay upright is going to continue... at least until April of next year.