Nick Foles invents a play in Philadelphia Eagles' win

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Nick Foles invents a play in Philadelphia Eagles’ win

By Kevin Patra NFL.com
Published: Dec. 10, 2012 at 05:50 a.m.
Updated: Dec. 10, 2012 at 03:17 p.m.

Philadelphia Eagles rookie quarterback Nick Foles led his first game-winning drive Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by going to his playground roots.

While it wasn’t exactly the Annexation of Puerto Rico, and there were no sticks-in-the-dirt diagrams, Foles’ 22-yard pass to wide receiver Jason Avant on fourth-and-5 with 16 seconds remaining to set up the game-winning touchdown was conjured up by the rookie.

“We don’t exactly have it in the playbook,” Eagles offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg said after Sunday’s dramatic 23-21 win, via CSNPhilly.com. “We do, but it’s two different plays, and he combined them.”

Foles told Avant to run a post route instead of the standard shallow crossing route the play calls for.

“It’s a route I normally don’t run, and we got it, so it was just a great job by Nick,” Avant said. “It wasn’t something we had, but we made it work.”

While Foles struggled in his first few starts since taking over for injured veteran Michael Vick, the rookie’s poise down the stretch in Sunday’s win showed why Andy Reid and the Eagles coaching staff had so much confidence in his ability coming out of the University of Arizona. Foles’ teammates have a similar faith in the rookie.

“But he’s not a rookie,” Avant said. “We don’t look at him like a rookie. The plays he’s making and the decisions he’s making, he’s definitely not a rookie anymore.”