the Foles meltdown

I see a lot of people assuming Foles melted down without a real definition of what that is. I agree he melted down; but I think defining what is meant by that is interesting. I think people probably agree on what a meltdown is, or anyway what Foles’ meltdown was, but the tricking is putting it in words.

Okay leaving his rookie year out of it (cause, rookie year) and leaving 2013 out of it…just looking at 2014 and 2015…I take it that it’s pretty clear he melted down.

A melt down means a dramatic change. Something mental, physical, emotional, or more than one of those things happened. It means that you see sustained ineffectiveness at a level that quite rightly gets the guy benched. The same thing was true of Schaub in 2013.

The key is a sustained dramatic change for the worse across a series of consecutive games. The “consecutive games” thing is important. Something happened, he couldn’t fight through it, he KEPT playing at a seriously low level.

So, some comparisons.

In 2014, he had an avg. qb rating of 81.4, with just one dramatically bad game (with a qb rating of 42.3). In those 8 games he had 13 TDs and 10 INTs, which is okay. He also had 3 4th quarter comeback/game winning drive games.

In the 1st 4 games of 2015, he had an avg. qb rating of 98 with a low of 73.1. He threw 5 TDs and 1 Int. He was actually on his way, on average, to playing better than 2014.

I count the meltdown as starting in the GB game. Others start it later. That’s interesting minutia stuff. But no matter where you start it, there’s a dramatic decline. His avg. qb rating is 73.2, and he has a series of 4 games with qb ratings of 68.7, 53.0, 49.9, and 43.3. In those 4 games, he throws 1 TD and 5 INTs. Across the 7 game stretch starting with GB, he throws 2 TDs and 9 Ints.

The question then becomes why.

I think, in general, he was not used to playing in a pro style offense, which includes dropping back from center and reading the D while doing so. Kelly’s qb play out of the shotgun. So I think he never unlearned the spread, and it caught up with him.

He also did the characteristic thing we see when a rush stymies a qb—throwing high. We saw it with Palmer, we saw it with Newton in the superbowl.

But I think it’s less that the rush gets to HIM than it’s a case of the rush getting to his CONFIDENCE. I think it’s pretty clear that was going on too.

Can he get it back? Technically, yes, but, there’s no guarantees by any means. Often in different careers entering into a sustained meltdown mode means the guy is just a back-up from that point on.

Anyway that’s just some thoughts.

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