Nick Foles’ Eagles career is weird, but legendary

Nick Foles will be an Eagle no more. Howie Roseman announced at the Combine that Foles will not be franchise tagged and will remain a free agent. Foles’ departure was a given, the question was how, and how soon. Now we have closure, Foles is and will remain a free agent.

Maybe one day, in the twilight of his career, Nick Foles will return for a retirement victory lap. He won’t have to take much in salary because he’ll never have to pay for anything in the Philadelphia area again. If they hadn’t already, they’d have to build a statue to Nick Foles. His career both as a whole and solely with the Eagles is weird, but his career is also legendary. There have been greater players that have played for the Eagles, but few have touched the peaks that Foles has.

He won the Super Bowl

Being the QB for a Super Bowl winning team is enough to make you an icon. But the legend of Foles goes beyond just holding the Lombardi Trophy.

NFL record 7 TD in one game

Nick Foles is not a Hall of Famer, but Nick Foles is already in the Hall of Fame. His jersey and shoes from his 2013 game against the Raiders are in Canton for tying the NFL record of 7 touchdown game. And in the (ironically) 7 games where players have thrown 7 TDs, he is the only one with a perfect passer rating, brought on by having the best completion percentage and yards per attempt. Nobody did it better than Foles.

Eagles single game passing yard record

Football does not have the romanticism with statistical records that other sports do, but rewriting team and league record books is still noteworthy. This season he set the Eagles single game passing record with 471 yards, and he did in a game where he needed to come up big. The previous record was by Donovan McNabb, who dropped 464 yards on the Packers in a 47-17 blowout as the Eagles steamrolled the NFC in 2004. A great achievement for McNabb, but with a touch of emptiness of running up the score. Foles’ record setting day came in a 32-30 win over the Texans in Week 16 to put the Eagles on the doorstep of the playoffs after a 4-6 start. A record setting day is a heck of an accomplishment, to do so in a must win game is legend boosting.

Super Bowl MVP

When he won the Super Bowl, he didn’t just win the Super Bowl. He beat the top team of his era, with the top coach of his era, and with the top QB of his era, who he bested. It would be one thing to “simply” be the QB on the Super Bowl winning Eagles, which again is plenty. But he was the MVP of the game, and it was wholly deserved.

Philly Special

If you’re lucky, you have an iconic moment as an athlete. Nick Foles has two, and they’re from the same play. When you see a picture of Nick Foles catching a pass, it instantly registers: the Philly Special, the greatest and boldest play in the history of the sport. And that’s not even the most iconic part of it...

The Statue

There are many iconic plays and moments in NFL history, but only on a few of them do we know the name of the play. The Philly Special is special for a few reasons, but one of them is that build up to it is just as key as the play itself. Nick Foles effectively calling his own number is the lasting image of the play, the game, the season, and his career. The statue of Foles and Doug Pederson is a fitting tribute to the championship team.

If it wasn’t already there, they’d have to make it.