Thomas: Rams are betting on Foles

Rams are betting on Foles

By Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/rams-are-betting-on-foles/article_45293c02-0857-50c3-b97a-11e7eacf1575.html

Nick Foles has his hands full.

He’s playing for a new team, learning a new offense, with a first-year NFL offensive coordinator in Frank Cignetti.

For the better part of his three previous NFL seasons, Foles operated in the shotgun and in the no-huddle, so he’s getting a refresher course in calling plays in the huddle and taking snaps under center.

Wait. We’re just getting started.

He’s got two rookie starters up front, plus an inexperienced center on the league’s most inexperienced offensive line.

His star rookie running back, Todd Gurley, won’t be available on opening day and may miss a couple of more games before he’s ready to roll. One of his starting wide receivers, Brian Quick, is still working into game shape after a long rehab from a severe shoulder injury and surgery.

At age 26, Nicholas Edward Foles has learned the virtue of patience.

“It’s something that I haven’t always had, but you just have to learn patience, especially throughout this,” he said. “It’s not just gonna happen overnight. That’s not how these things work.

“You’ve gotta build it up through time. You’re gonna go through your ups, you’re gonna go through your downs. So it’s like I say, every day I just want to get a little bit better. It really is a process, and you just have to own the process, just accept it for what it is.”

For more than a decade, the overall “process” hasn’t been pretty for the St. Louis Rams. We’re speaking, of course, of the 11 consecutive seasons without a winning record, the decade-long drought of playoff appearances, that 15-65 won-loss mark from 2007-11 that set an NFL record for ineptitude over a five-year stretch.

So the sooner Foles and the Rams’ offense get through this process, the better. Because the fan base doesn’t have much patience, not with the team’s long streak of losing seasons and the specter of a franchise relocation to Los Angeles after this season.

“We all know that this position is very hard to play, especially in a new offense,” said Rams quarterbacks coach Chris Weinke.

(Did we mention Foles also has a first-year NFL quarterbacks coach in Weinke, the former Heisman Trophy winner and pro QB?)

“But collectively, if you look at his body of work, he’s made great strides in our offense,” Weinke said. “To me, more important is how do you carry yourself? Do you have great leadership skills? Do you build relationships with guys in that locker room? Are you well-respected? Do you go about your business the right way?

“And he checks all the boxes in those areas. We’ve only been with him for a short period of time, so there are still some unknowns. Limited playing time in the preseason. Still learning, really, all the intricacies of our offense.

“But he’s very smart. He can pick up the information. He can process information. There’s something about him that just tells me — not only just watching him in the past and evaluating his film — that the guy elevates his game when the lights are on.

“So that will be exciting to see. And I’ll be the first to say he still has a long way to go, and he will admit that as well.”

Even so, the Rams thought enough of Foles that before he’d even thrown a single preseason pass, they signed him to a contract extension through the 2017 season — one that will pay him $26 million over the 2015, ’16, and ’17 seasons and can max out at $39.5 million if a variety of incentives are met.

Although grateful for the Rams’ show of faith, Foles adds, “I know how the NFL works, too. You’ve gotta sign contracts all the time, and then they go one year, and then they’re gone.”

Granted, $13.8 million of Foles’ contract is guaranteed, but he knows in the NFL you’ve got to produce or you’re gone.

“I’m very fortunate and very thankful to sign a contract with them,” he said. “I’ve gotta be the best I can be every single day. The important thing is never to be complacent and be happy where you’re at. You always want to improve.”

Foles knows the value of hard work. He saw it every day from his father, Larry, and mother, Melissa, growing up in Austin, Texas.

“Both my parents growing up, and both not having the greatest childhoods, and really what they went through in life to provide for me and my two younger sisters,” Foles said.

“Dad coming home late at night from working all day, kissing us on the head and smelling like he’d been in the kitchen all day. Stuff like that. Those are memories that you just always remember.”

Larry Foles is a classic American success story. He started out on the bottom rung of the restaurant business. His first big break was assistant manager at a Shoney’s. One thing led to another, and in 2011 he and partner Guy Villavaso sold a group of restaurants for $59 million.

The Foles family is still involved in the restaurant business. In fact, count Rams backup QB Case Keenum as a satisfied customer.

“The Salty Sow in Austin,” Keenum said. “It’s incredible, it really is. Farm to table. It’s an awesome place.”

Because of all that hard work by his father and mother, Foles could concentrate on sports. Instead of getting an after-school job, he could train, lift weights, etc.

“I always took that to the practice field, always took that to the weight room, knowing that they gave me that opportunity to spend that time doing that,” Foles said.

In high school, the result was a star quarterback in football and two-time school MVP in basketball at Westlake High in Austin. That’s the same high school that Drew Brees attended, but by the time Foles was finished there he had thrown for 5,668 yards and 56 touchdowns and had broken many of Brees’ school records.

Even so, you could make the case that basketball was Foles’ best sport. He was recruited by Texas, Georgetown and Baylor in hoops and had Division I offers.

“I grew up loving basketball,” said Foles, who is 6-6. “And I still love basketball.”

He could dunk as an eighth-grader, and at one time could do the 360 jam. Had he been a couple, three inches taller — who knows? — he may have gone in that direction. But he also had a love for football.

“I prayed about it, and football was the way I was supposed to go,” Foles said. “I knew I could go further in football.”

He loved the leadership aspect of playing quarterback, but also the team aspect of depending on others to help get the job done.

After initially committing to Arizona State, he opted instead for Michigan State. During his redshirt freshman season, 2007, the Spartans’ quarterback meeting room consisted of Foles, Brian Hoyer and Kirk Cousins. That’s a pretty good room — all are now NFL starters.

And after Oklahoma transfer Keith Nichol joined the squad in 2008, Foles did some more praying. He decided to transfer to Arizona, leaving Michigan State with five completions in eight attempts for 57 yards during that redshirt year.

The rest of the story is more familiar. He brought a struggling Arizona program to respectability, then was drafted in the third round in 2012 by Andy Reid in Philadelphia. After three seasons there, including his incredible 2013 Pro Bowl campaign in which he threw 27 TD passes and only two interceptions in the regular season, Foles is now a Ram as a result of the Sam Bradford trade.

So what do the Rams have in Foles?

“You are asking one of Nick Foles’ biggest fans,” Reid, now with Kansas City, said after the Governor’s Cup game with the Rams at the Edward Jones Dome “He is smart, he has good accuracy, and he is a big body. A big, strong guy, and he is young. He is going nowhere but up here.”

And from Chiefs wide receiver Jeremy Maclin, the former Kirkwood High and University of Missouri star, and Foles’ teammate for three seasons in Philly:

“I’ve kind of heard the Rams guys saying, ‘In 5 we trust,’ and all that other stuff,” Maclin said. “So that just goes to show you the type of respect people give him based off the type of person he is and the type of player he is.”

Foles, of course, wears jersey No. 5 for the Rams.

In 5 we trust.

The Rams don’t really have a choice. The contract extension provided an exclamation point to the fact that they are all-in on Foles, for better or worse.

“What I have noticed from OTAs and training camp is this guy very rarely if ever makes the same mistake twice,” Weinke said. “So from the coaches’ point of view, it’s very encouraging. We are nowhere close to where we need to be. But I think that the process will come to fruition as we continue to go through this journey.”