Foles released … & (8/3) gets picked up

People will always remember this day as being the end of the Foles Era.

Nick Foles, LA Rams do each other a favor

http://www.dailynews.com/sports/20160727/nick-foles-la-rams-do-each-other-a-favor

IRVINE >> The Rams cut quarterback Nick Foles on Wednesday in a move that, apparently, can be considered an act of mercy.

Oh, no, not for Foles, who reportedly asked for his release. Rather, the team evidently was looking out for the rest of us, the Rams already showing how deeply they care about their new fans.

Even before the veterans officially began checking in for the start of training camp here, the team sliced its roster by one, slicing being among the most effective ways to remove a wart.

Personally, I have only limited knowledge of how Foles played last season, since last season for the Rams happened in St. Louis.

But Kevin Patra, who writes for the NFL’s website, had a better view, and he definitely didn’t like what he saw.

In his report on the Foles transaction, Patra detailed how inaccurate the quarterback was in 2015, how Foles struggled reading defenses and how he “made mind-numbingly terrible decisions and was annoyingly obnoxious to watch.”

And I ask you, would a responsible professional sports franchise subject an otherwise wholesome market to such offensive images?

The Rams, more than six weeks before their first real game, should receive some sort of civic services award.

Patra concluded his story by predicting that, given the NFL’s lack of quality quarterbacks, “even Foles’ terrible game tape won’t stop him from finding work.”

Though it wasn’t specifically noted, I think we can safely assume that Patra then vomited on his laptop.

As a columnist, I have to admit I’m a little saddened by the Rams’ latest personnel decision. Sounds like Foles could have provided fodder for a season’s worth of epic rip jobs.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had the chance to describe someone was being “annoyingly obnoxious to watch,” and I witnessed nearly every one of Josh Hamilton’s at-bats with the Angels.

Of course, Foles wasn’t likely to play for the Rams this season, coach Jeff Fisher having benched him last year and the team using the No. 1 pick in the draft on Jared Goff.

In an ideal world, Goff will emerge this summer as the Rams starter, lead the team to an undefeated season and then win the Super Bowl by throwing for 600 yards and eight touchdowns, a performance made all the more amazing by the fact that, en route to being named the title game’s MVP, Goff never stopped playing Pokemon Go.

Naturally, things are unlikely to unfold so ideally for the Rams, although the questions about the pressure to succeed immediately arrived at training camp this week only minutes after the players did.

It was the second question, to be precise, to the first player the team made available to the media on Tuesday afternoon, when the Rams’ rookies reported to UC Irvine.

“This is my (first) year, so I can’t really say too much about all that,” wide receiver Pharoh Cooper explained. “We’re just going to go out there and try to win as many games as we can.”

I love this parochially charming notion that the Rams, by moving from St. Louis to Southern California, somehow now face the burden of immensely increased expectations.

Yeah, around here we never would stand for the Dodgers going without a World Series title since 1988. Or the Lakers being worse than they’ve ever been. Or the Angels having their poorest season in years.

Or the Clippers never advancing beyond the second round of the playoffs. Or the Ducks annually failing to win a Game 7 at home.

In St. Louis, the Rams only had to worry about being compared to the NHL’s Blues and baseball’s Cardinals, a franchise that hardly ever wins in the postseason, particularly against the Dodgers.

Yet, win-now will be a popular theme for the Rams with the local media, just like the suggestion that — with this being glitzy, star-driven L.A. — Goff absolutely has to be the starter sooner than later.

See, we’re entirely too sophisticated and demanding to accept faceless, boring Case Keenum as our quarterback, an idea that conveniently forgets that, the last time the Rams played locally, their starter was Chris Miller.

As it is, at least one of the Rams is entering training camp talking like a potential glitzy star. Rookie wide receiver Mike Thomas certainly didn’t sound like a sixth-round pick this week.

“I’m very confident, 100-percent confident,” he said. “You gotta be 100-percent confident in this game. If you don’t have enough confidence, you’re going to play like you have no confidence.”

Or, maybe even worse, you’re going to play like Nick Foles, whose “mind-numbingly terrible decisions” are mercifully and rightly someone else’s problems now.

This is Southern California, you know, where, whenever necessary, anything lacking can be surgically enhanced. Even our expectations.

Should Cowboys look into Nick Foles?

Todd Archer
ESPN Staff Writer

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/cowboys/post/_/id/4752135/should-cowboys-look-into-nick-foles

OXNARD, Calif. — Nick Foles skipped the offseason workouts at the River Ridge practice fields with the Los Angeles Rams in the spring. Could he be on those fields this summer with the Dallas Cowboys?

The Rams released Foles on Wednesday, creating an opportunity for the Cowboys to potentially upgrade their backup quarterback spot behind Tony Romo.

Will they? Foles was on the Cowboys’ list of potential candidates earlier in the offseason, knowing the potential of his release. The Cowboys did not go after the higher-priced backups, such as Chase Daniel or Colt McCoy, when free agency began. They met with Matt Moore, but he opted to remain with the Miami Dolphins.

Nick Foles has more starting experience and more NFL success than current Cowboys backup QB Kellen Moore. L.G. Patterson/AP
They worked out all of the top quarterbacks entering the draft, and the Cowboys nearly traded back into the first round to take Paxton Lynch but opted against it. They ended up taking Dak Prescott in the fourth round, but he is not a candidate to be the backup just yet.

As the Cowboys get on the plane for Oxnard, California, on Thursday, they do so with Kellen Moore as Romo’s backup. He played in three games last year, starting two, and had four touchdown passes and six interceptions.

Offensive coordinator Scott Linehan has been Moore’s biggest backer. They worked together with the Detroit Lions. Linehan was a big reason why Moore ended up joining the Cowboys’ practice squad after the final cuts last September.

The Cowboys love his smarts and intangibles, but he’s just 5-foot-10, 200 pounds and does not possess a big arm.

Foles is 6-5, 244. He was a third-round pick of the Philadelphia Eagles in 2012. He has a 19-16 career record with 53 touchdown passes and 27 interceptions. The trade to the Rams in 2015 did not work out, even though he received a two-year extension worth $24.5 million. He had a 4-7 record with seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions and lost his job. When the Rams moved up to the No. 1 spot in the draft, his time with the Rams was through. The Rams took Jared Goff No. 1 overall to be their quarterback.

In 2013, Foles had 27 touchdown passes and two interceptions and made the Pro Bowl. He beat the Cowboys in a Week 17 winner-take-all meeting with Romo out because of back surgery.

The Cowboys went 1-11 without Romo last year. Brandon Weeden, Matt Cassel and Moore were not part of the solution.

While they said the backup quarterback position was a priority for them in the offseason, they did nothing to truly address it.

After current head coach Jason Garrett became offensive coordinator in 2007, the Cowboys stocked their backup position mostly with veterans — Brad Johnson, Jon Kitna and Kyle Orton. The last two years, however, they went the relatively inexperienced route with Weeden, who was eventually released last season.

So far they are going with inexperience again in Moore, which many view as odd considering Romo’s recent injury history.

The Rams’ release of Foles, who would offer up more experience at a good age (he’s just 27) gives the Cowboys another opportunity to address the backup position.

PA Ram wrote:

Florio: The same people who think Jared Goff is the answer now, thought Nick Foles was the answer a year ago.

Yeah Florio is fond of that kind of spin.

First, no one thought Foles was “the answer.” That’s bs. Compare what they said about Foles to what they say about Goff.

Foles if he continued in his 2014 mode was a decent qb especially compared to the alternative, which was nothing. No one said or thought Foles was special. It’s no accident IMO that they drafted Gurley the same year they had just traded for Foles. They thought he could effectively manage an offense on a team that featured defense.

Goff, on the other hand, they clearly believe is worth trading up to the first pick in the draft.

Florio does that. He gets into superficial barbs. And he’s wrong at about an equal percentage to when he’s right. But then he doesn’t know. He covers 32 teams equally and therefore doesn’t know as much about the Rams as we dedicated and well-informed Rams fans.

That isn’t the same as guaranteeing Goff will be a star. But I DO know they talked about each them, Foles and Goff, completely differently when each first came aboard.

And no one btw foresaw the Foles meltdown. That’s because there actually isn’t anything in Foles’s play in 2014 that foreshadowed that.

Oh and I don’t think it was just play on the field. There’s behind closed doors stuff at work in this too, but we have only gotten small hints about that.

Either way the situations were different. With Foles it was, they had no shot at a qb if they unloaded an injured Bradford, other than Foles.

With Goff they spent months looking at the alternatives and asking who was worth the price. They made a choice in that case. Foles was never their “choice” that way. He was, as I said, better than the alternative—nothing—and you could see them working to make the best of that. With Goff, they are doing far more than just working to make the best of something. He’s their guy. It’s different.

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bnw wrote:

No, I disagree. They paid Foles because they thought he was the answer at QB. No one was talking drafting a QB first overall the next year because the team thought they had their QB in Foles. Hey it is StanK’s cash so no tears here.

Again the differences between us I think amount to semantics.

The point I am making is that they never pumped him up or touted him as top qb talent.

It was all along the lines of he can do the job, not he is top qb talent.

If you’re saying his contract reflected how they estimated him, then, it’s important to note that in the category of qb he was–a starter signing his 2nd contract—his was the lowest of that group, and by far. I mean 4-5 M lower than the next lowest. Plus it was just a 2 year deal. That did not indicate he was The Answer, as in now we’re set for years with a top qb talent. Instead it indicated he was An Answer, as in yes we can win with this guy, he’ll be fine.

They never talked about him the way they talk about Goff, and that’s just a fact.

So it just depends on what one means by The Answer.

To me, from what I saw, the only thing they saw him as The Answer to was not having a vet qb starter (cause they intended to trade Bradford).

They thought he would be okay. The contract numbers reflect that. For anyone else of a higher caliber, including guys like Dalton, that contract is insulting low.

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bnw wrote:

zn wrote:

bnw wrote:

No, I disagree. They paid Foles because they thought he was the answer at QB. No one was talking drafting a QB first overall the next year because the team thought they had their QB in Foles. Hey it is StanK’s cash so no tears here.

Again the differences between us I think amount to semantics.

The point I am making is that they never pumped him up or touted him as top qb talent.

It was all along the lines of he can do the job, not he is top qb talent.

If you’re saying his contract reflected how they estimated him, then, it’s important to note that in the category of qb he was–a starter signing his 2nd contract—his was the lowest of that group, and by far. I mean 4-5 M lower than the next lowest. Plus it was just a 2 year deal. That did not indicate he was The Answer, as in now we’re set for years with a top qb talent. Instead it indicated he was An Answer, as in yes we can win with this guy, he’ll be fine.

They never talked about him the way they talk about Goff, and that’s just a fact.

So it just depends on what one means by The Answer.

To me, from what I saw, the only thing they saw him as The Answer to was not having a vet qb starter (cause they intended to trade Bradford).

They thought he would be okay. The contract numbers reflect that. For anyone else of a higher caliber, including guys like Dalton, that contract is insulting low.

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Ok I can agree with that though the Foles era ended when they drafted Goff.

Okay. But “the Foles era has ended” was just a joke. “Era” is an inflated word in this context so that was irony (admittedly lame cause it didn’t come across). It would be like watching Jurrasic World and then praising it for its “aesthetically nuanced and resonant epic narrative.” In other words, irony through inflation.

In REAL terms? Jokes aside? Yeah Foles was done when they drafted Goff.

Adam Schefter ‏@AdamSchefter
The two teams the Rams discussed a potential Nick Foles trade with before the draft were Buffalo and Dallas, which now needs a backup QB.

Chiefs are giving QB Nick Foles a one-year deal plus a team option for a 2nd year, per source.

Cowboys' hunt for a backup QB goes on.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) August 4, 2016