Nick Foles vs. Chicago Bears: 17/36, 200 Yards, 1 INT, 53.0 Passer Rating

4th Quarter

Pass #30

Situation: 1st and 15 SL 15
Description: Q4-(11:24) N. Foles Pass Short Right to T. Austin Pushed Out of Bounds at SL 19 for 4 Yards (T. Porter)

There is nothing to talk about Foles on this play as this is a designed play action screen pass to Austin. (13/28, 167 Yards)

Pass #31

Situation: 2nd and 11 SL 19
Dscription: Q4-(10:55) N. Foles Pass Incomplete Short Left to B. Quick [M. Unrein]

Foles has had the issue of throwing a lot of high passes in his NFL career and it hasn’t gone away yet. This isn’t a bad read for going to Quick on the curl route as Fuller is bailing in his coverage and a well timed throw is going to beat Fuller. But this is a deep curl route so this ball needs to be thrown early to prevent Fuller from recovering and making a play. The timing of this throw is not that good as it is thrown late (it should have been thrown once Quick is going into his break). On top of that, Foles throws a ball that would have taken Lebron James to catch as this pass is very high. He fades on his throw due to the pass rush (Gurley does a poor job blocking Jones on the blitz and Robinson gets beaten by the bull rush of DE Mitch Unrein) but if he throws this with good timing he wouldn’t need to fade on the throw. (13/29, 167 Yards)

Pass #32

Situation: 3rd and 11 SL 19
Description: Q4-(10:50) N. Foles Pass Short Right to L. Kendricks Pushed Out of Bounds at SL 23 for 4 Yards (J. Anderson)

There is nothing Foles can do to make this play work. None of his WRs get open on this play so Foles has nowhere to go with the ball at first. Then, the pocket starts to collapse as Young is able to split Robinson and Reynolds on the stunt and get inside pressure on Foles. This forces Foles to flush to his left where his open receiver is Kendricks underneath. Foles has no choice but to go to Kendricks and the Rams fail to get a first down. (14/30, 171 Yards)

Pass #33

Situation: 1st and 10 SL 20
Description: Q4-(8:05) N. Foles Pass Short Right to B. Cunningham Pushed Out of Bounds at SL 22 for 2 Yards (B. Callahan)

This is a designed screen play to Cunningham and Foles doesn’t do anything worth commenting on. (15/31, 173 Yards)

Pass #34

Situation: 2nd and 8 SL 22
Description: Q4-(7:41) N. Foles Sacked at SL 13 for -9 Yards (L. Houston)

Foles has no chance on this play as he is given no time to go through his reads. The Rams are running deeper and longer developing routes on this play so Foles needs time to wait for these routes to open up. The offensive line gives him no time though as the pocket caves in on him almost immediately. Houston, Acho, and Goldman get past Robinson, Havenstein, and Brown respectively and all meet at Foles for the sack.

Pass #35

Situation: 3rd and 17 SL 13
Description: Q4-(7:06) N. Foles Pass Short Middle to B. Marquez to SL 24 for 11 Yards (S. McClellin)

The Rams are already expecting to go for it on fourth down considering their play call (all slants) so Foles has no options deep. Foles first read is to Marquez on the slant and he sees Callahan playing off coverage. This leaves Marquez open on the slant and Foles makes the right read to go to Marquez. His throw to Marquez is good as well and the Rams set up a 4th an manageable with this play. (16/32, 184 Yards)

Pass #36

Situation: 4th and 6 SL 24
Description: Q4-(6:41) N. Foles Pass Incomplete Short Right to B. Quick (T. Porter)

Foles has to get this ball out of his hand faster if he wants to complete this pass to Quick. Porter is not respecting the deep route at all and is sitting on a short route. Quick is open right as he cuts on the slant but Foles hesitates and waits to throw the pass until Quick is in the second phase of his route. This lets Porter jump the slant and break up the pass. If Foles is going to wait this long to pass the ball, he should go to the next slant over and see Marquez has inside leverage on Callahan. A high and inside throw would beat Callahan and the Rams would pick up a first down. Also I have to question why Foles is even throwing to Quick to begin with. Quick’s route breaks well short of the first down and even if this is complete pass to him, he has to break Porter’s tackle attempt to pick up a first down. (16/33, 184 Yards)

Pass #37

Situation: 1st and 10 SL 20
Description: Q4-(4:40) N. Foles Pass Short Left to T. Mason to SL 36 for 16 Yards (C. Jones)

Not much to talk about here since this is a screen pass to RB Tre Mason. Good job by Foles to look to his left (to draw the defense to his left) before going to the screen on the right. (17/34, 200 Yards)

Pass #38

Situation: 1st and 10 SL 36
Description: Q4-(4:24) N. Foles Pass Incomplete Short Right to T. Mason [W. Young]. Penalty on CHI-W. Young, Roughing the Passer, 15 Yards, Enforced at SL 36 - No Play

Another screen pass by the Rams so I have nothing to say about Foles. Mason should have caught this pass but its all for naught as Young gets called for Roughing the Passer

Pass #39

Situation: 1st and 10 CHI 49
Description: Q4-(4:19) N. Foles Pass Incomplete Deep Left to T. Austin

Foles mechanics cost him again as this should be a big completion to Austin. Austin sets up Fuller like he is going to run the post route and then cuts to the outside, leaving Fuller in his wake. Foles makes the right call to go to his first read but his mechanics are awful. Foles is fading in the pocket and this makes no sense has Foles has the ideal pocket to throw in. Foles never stops fading before the throw and he doesn’t get any momentum going forward when he releases the pass. Foles arm strength is in the bottom half of the league and this throw to Austin is one the hardest throws to make in the game purely on arm strength. Foles has to set and throw with great mechanics if he is going to throw it to Austin. Instead the ball floats out of his hand and is well under thrown to Austin who cannot make the catch. (17/35, 200 Yards)

Pass #40

Situation: 2nd and 10 CHI 49
Description: Q4-(4:14) N. Foles Pass Intended for W. Welker Intercepted by W. Young at CHI 46. W. Young to SL 15 for 39 Yards (T. Barnes)

This is a fitting end to a miserable game by Foles against the Bears. Foles is staring down Welker and Young is watching Foles’ eyes. Young is in Foles’ field of vision so I don’t know how he doesn’t see Young sitting in the throwing lane. Going to Welker isn’t a bad idea as Welker has beaten Callahan to the inside and Anderson has drifted to the middle of the field. But Foles has to wait a half second longer for Welker to get too deep for Young to take away the throw and throw the ball in the window between Anderson and Callahan. If Foles doesn’t want to do this, he should have instead looked at either comeback route as Fuller and Porter are playing off coverage and Britt and Austin are both open. (17/36, 200 Yards, 1 INT)

Overall Impressions

Nick Foles is obviously uncomfortable in this system still and it shows. Compare Foles to Eli Manning, Tom Brady, or even Cam Newton and there is a significant difference in what they do before the snap. Foles looks like he is barely doing anything pre snap and it looks like Tim Barnes is calling all of the blitz pick up and protection sets. Manning, Brady, and Newton are all over the place before the snap as they are calling out blitz pickup, checking into the right play, audibling out bad plays, using hand signals to tell WRs what they should do, and various other things. Foles not being active before the snap isn’t necessarily a bad thing as Jay Cutler is having a good season and he looks like he (pardon my french) doesn’t give a fuck before the play. But combined with everything else Foles does and it shows he doesn’t have a grasp of the system. This isn’t all that surprising either as Foles ins’t use to a Jeff Fisher offense. Foles came out of Arizona and played for the Eagles before coming to the Rams. Both of those teams run a very open system and have a lot of spread passing attack elements in the offense. Fisher wishes he could run the ball every play and runs a more traditional NFL offense. This transition wasn’t going to be easy but Foles should be improving by now. Instead he looks like he is regressing and showed many tendencies of poor QB play.

The most obvious issues he has is he doesn’t come off his first read way too often. He will stare down his first read for a long time and either try to force a pass to the first read if it isn’t open, dump it off to the RB, or take a long time to get into his progression. Eli Manning in comparison is whipping his head around as he goes through his progression and his eyes rarely lock in a one receiver for too long. Foles needs to work his way through his progression and be quick about it if he is going to be a NFL QB. His second issues is that his eyes tell all. He only looked off the defense on screen passes and he stares down his intended receiver. The good QBs will use their eyes to open up receivers. Foles doesn’t even try to do this and defenses can key off on where he is going to throw. The third issues is Foles is very hesitant on his throws. Too often Foles is late on his throws as he is trying to make sure what he is seeing is correct. This gives time for the defense to recover and make a play on the ball and what should be completions turn into passes defended and incompletions. The forth issue he has is he is jittery in the pocket. He will start drifting backwards if he doesn’t see anything open quickly and won’t start drifting backwards till he throws the ball. I don’t think he stepped up into the pocket once throughout the game and this is something he must start doing. His drifting backwards ties into the fifth issue which is poor mechanics. Foles too often is off balance and is leaning backwards when he is throwing the ball. This causes two issues. The first is the ball tends to float on Foles. This leads to overthrows on short and intermediate routes. The second thing it causes is the lack of arm strength. To get the most out of a throw, the QB needs to have his weight going forward and step into a throw. If a QB is leaning backwards, he loses the ability to use his core and legs to push the ball deeper. His poor mechanics contribute to the last glaring issue Foles has. Foles cannot push the ball deep and take the top off a defense. If the defense has no respect for the deep ball, they will tighten their coverage and suffocate a passing attack. Foles does not strike any fear into defenses that he will beat them deep so the defense creeps up. This takes away the shorter routes that Foles is more comfortable with and limits what the offense can do. Its not like Foles lacks weapons to go deep with either. Tavon Austin has all the speed in the world and Kenny Britt can go up for a jump ball with his size. But his inability to throw deep severely limits what the offense can do. Foles has a lot of work to do if he is ever going to recover his 2013 form and maybe a week or two not starting will allow him to work on his mechanics and other issues. But Foles has multiple fatal flaws and unless he gets rid of at least a few of them, he will never make it as an NFL QB.