Some intended-to-be-quick-but-aren’t thoughts:
• Nick Foles isn’t elite. But he has shown enough now that we can say he can do a damned good impression of being elite under the exact right system. That’s where guys like Brady, Rodgers, Brees, Peyton, etc. are/were different. The system doesn’t matter, the players around them don’t matter – they made everyone better. Foles is never going to be that guy. Doug Pederson saw that and modified the offense to what Foles does best. He took what worked with Chip Kelly, tossed the bullshit up-tempo-always nonsense, and gave him a more sophisticated passing attack. And in that offense, Foles is better than guys like Flacco, Dalton, Newton, and especially Eli, are in theirs. Don’t forget, Foles didn’t just have the 27-2 season. He had the greatest single statistical game a QB has ever played in there. The throws he made in this postseason (flea flicker to Torrey Smith, dimes to Corey Clement and Alshon Jeffery in the Super Bowl, etc.) show that Foles can make elite throws only a handful of guys can. He wasn’t some unknown backup who got hot. He’s done this before.
Which is a long way of saying Foles’ Super Bowl wasn’t a fluke, but the investment to make it happen again is way, way too high to be worth it. It isn’t just his trade price, which would be absurd. Just trading for him will absolutely fail. You’d have to build an entire coaching staff and roster around him. His offensive line has to be good enough to trick Foles into not back-pedaling on every drop back (an underrated reason 2014 was so bad). His receivers have to be able to beat press man quickly, consistently. But they also have to be able to play the ball downfield. His running back has to be disciplined. And his coach has to be really, really good at calling an unpredictable, evolving offense. Foles can give you a lot more than every other average and above-average QBs, but not easily.
• Let’s talk a bit about Eli. There has never been a more overrated, dining-car-along-for-the-ride QB. Of Yards (and Y/A), TDs, and QB Rating, he has been top 3 in only one category, once. Never led the league in any of those. But he has led the league in INTs three times. He has, in basically 13 seasons, been top ten in QB Rating once. Never top 3. Never even top 5. If you compare his career per-season averages to league-wide averages, even excluding his partial first year, his stats are basically almost exactly league average. I’m an Eagles fan, so fuck Eli, but even I had a better opinion of him than the numbers deserve.
Eli Manning is the proof you can win a Super Bowl with an average quarterback, not Nick Foles.
• The Browns’ drafting strategy is excellent. It’s their scouting department that has consistently, habitually, let them down. If I owned a team and they drafted based on the Browns’ strategy, I’m happy. Then again, I’d be going through scouting personnel like Oreos.
On that note, I think Howie Roseman has guided the Eagles front office into a new league paradigm. He moves up, he moves back, but where he I think he has led a revolution within the league is that he recognizes that trading players is the best way to shape a roster. Nobody has traded players more than Howie Roseman when you consider his two stints as GM sandwiching the Chip Kelly era. Teams so overvalue draft picks that you can get proven veteran players for significantly less than they seem to be worth. Like when Roseman got Tim Jernigan in exchange for the Ravens getting to move up a few spots in the third round. Or you can trade away horrible contracts that turned out to be a mistake. Like when he traded away Byron Maxwell, Kiko Alonzo, and a 1st round pick for a better 1st round pick in order to move up and get Carson Wentz.
Maybe it’s simplistic to say, but my front office strategy would be to use my top 2-3 picks to get the best player available, my late picks to trade for veterans to fill gaps in my roster, and free agency to sign depth and bench players only. It just seems to me to be the best route by far.
