NFL: Philadelphia Eagles at Arizona Cardinals

Oct 26, 2014; Glendale, AZ, USA; Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Nick Foles in the second half against the Arizona Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium. The Cardinals defeated the Eagles 24-20. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

(Mark J. Rebilas)

The Eagles have plenty of questions to answer this offseason, but the biggest is perhaps at the quarterback position, and it is one that fans and analysts will spend all offseason discussing.

Is Nick Foles the answer for head coach Chip Kelly and the Eagles at quarterback?

It is a question that Kelly himself has been hesitant to answer, saying at the end of the season that he had to go back and look at the tape before making a commitment to any player for next season.

His lack of support is a far cry from the end of the 2013 season, when Kelly said that Foles would be his quarterback for the next 1,000 years. The comment was made in jest, but Kelly won't even joke about Foles being his guy going forward anymore, and what he does at the quarterback position this offseason very well could decide the team's 2015 season before it even begins.

So what should the team do with Foles?

I went back and looked at every snap Foles has taken in the 2013 and 2014 season, putting together this final assessment of his play the past two seasons.

Cold, Hard Facts

Foles has become a hot topic in this city, with some firmly on his side, and others committed to moving on. Here is a look at just the facts.

A third-round pick in 2012, Foles has appeared in 28 games for the Eagles, starting 24 of them. He has gone 15-9 in those 24 starts and 0-1 in the playoffs. It is worth noting, however, that he went 1-5 as a rookie on a 4-12 Eagles teams. Here is a look at his career numbers.

2012: 7 games, 1,699 yards, 6 TDs, 5 INTs, 60.8 cmp %

2013: 13 games, 2,891 yards, 27 TDs, 2 INTs, 64 cmp %

2014: 8 games, 2,163 yards, 13 TDs, 10 INTs, 59.8 cmp %

Despite throwing 10 interceptions this season, Foles has done a good job holding onto the ball. His 0.6% interception percentage in 2013 was the third best percentage in a single season for a quarterback. Here is how Foles stacks up to other quarterbacks three seasons into their career.

Here's a list of the 10 quarterbacks who've thrown the fewest interceptions per pass attempt in NFL history. pic.twitter.com/57xr1vQDtg — Reuben Frank (@RoobNBCS) January 16, 2015

Foles has also proven to be pretty clutch, and had a game-winning touchdown in the final seconds against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a rookie.

In just 24 starts, the quarterback has five game winning drive, and the three drives he engineered to win games last season was the fifth most in the NFL, despite the fact he only played in eight games. Foles also turned it on and drove the Eagles down the field last season against the San Francisco 49ers, and had them only a few yards away from winning after struggling during the first three-plus quarters.

Strengths

Numbers aside, Foles has shown some encouraging signs during his brief time as starting quarterback of the Eagles.

Productive:

Since taking over for an injured Michael Vick in Week 5 of the 2013 season, Foles has consistently been able to get the Eagles up and down the field. In the 18 games that he has started and finished with Kelly as the head coach, the Eagles offense averages 402.7 yards of offense.

Even as a rookie, when he took over for a bad Eagles team and played without running back LeSean McCoy and wide receiver DeSean Jackson for the majority of the time, the offense averaged 331 yards per game with Foles at the helm.

There is no denying the that presence of Kelly helps Foles. The head coach is considered one of the best play callers in the NFL. Still, Foles has done an impressive job moving the ball.

Winning Record:

As backup quarterback Mark Sanchez said towards the end of this past season, they only keep the records of quarterbacks and head coaches for a reason. It doesn't always have to be pretty, but if a quarterback can win, he tends to stick in the NFL. Unless, of course, your name is Tim Tebow.

Since Kelly came to Philadelphia, Foles has a 14-5 record in the 19 games he has started and finished. Even this past season, when his play was pretty poor the majority of the time, Foles stepped off of the field in Houston with a 5-2 record.

As with any win/loss record, you can nitpick and say Foles was not the reason they won all 14 games, and you would be right in doing so. It is also worth nothing that of those 14 wins, only one of them came against a playoff team (Indianapolis in Week 2).

After watching all of his snaps from this past season, however, Foles did make plays when given the chance to win games.

Here is a look at Foles' offensive line in the team's Week 3 win over the Washington Redskins.

Foles had his best game of the season that week, throwing for 325 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions, including this beauty of a pass.

The Eagles needed the big game from Foles as they escaped with a 37-34 win. By comparison, Sanchez (with a healthy offensive line) threw for 274 yards and two touchdowns in the Eagles' Week 16 matchup with the Redskins — but threw a key interception in a three point loss.

He might not have been the reason the team won all 14 games, but Foles has shown that as a starting quarterback in the NFL, he can win — not something that should be brushed over.

Drive the ball

When Foles sets his feet and has time, he has shown he has the arm strength to drive the ball down the field into some tight spaces.

In this Wild Card game against the New Orleans Saints, Foles has that time he needs (as you can see by the running clock) and delivers a strike between three defenders to receiver Riley Cooper for a touchdown.

Here is what Foles sees when he makes the throw.

The window looks big, but it closes quickly. In the playoffs, in the cold, in the red zone. That is a big-boy, NFL throw. Foles showed time and time again in 2013, and occasionally last season, the ability to make that throw.

Weaknesses

After a disastrous eight games last season, the bad might be starting to outweigh the good when it comes to Foles. Here is a look at some of his weaknesses.

Reckless with the ball

As listed above, Foles has put up some pretty impressive stats when it comes to turnovers. After only throwing two interceptions in 2013, however, Foles got a reputation as being extremely careful with the ball. Something that simply isn't the case.

In his football career, excluding high school, Foles has started 59 combined games at the University of Arizona and with the Eagles. In those 59 games, he has thrown 50 interceptions, and put the ball on the ground 16 times alone in the NFL.

A perfect example of how reckless Foles can be with the ball, but how he hasn't always paid the price, came back in Week 13 of the 2013 season against the Arizona Cardinals.

In this first play, Foles has the ball out on his side as he is bring brought down, leaving it there to be swatted away.

One thing that sticks out consistently when watching Foles in both 2013 and 2014 is how many interceptions he has either dropped or batted away. Here are two alone against the Cardinals.

Foles was lucky yet again later in the game, when he had an interception late in the game taken away due to a questionable holding penalty. Had the interception stood, the Cardinals could have won the game, and the Eagles might not have made the playoffs.

While those are hypothetical outcomes, and you can point to dropped interceptions for every quarterback, Foles has had his fair share of luck the past two seasons when it comes to his reckless play with the ball. Going forward, you have to wonder if Kelly is going to be content in hoping that luck continues.

Not a threat to run

Nearly every analyst thinks that in Kelly's offense, a mobile quarterback is needed, something the head coach himself has denied. He is right, as Foles has shown he can move the ball, and it is fair to say that the biggest attribute needed to run Kelly's offense is the ability to determine what the defense is showing you before the snap.

That aside, however, there is absolutely no denying that a quarterback that can make plays with his legs would be helpful in Kelly's offense.

You could make a pretty thick tabletop book of all of these below images, where the defense shows Foles absolutely no respect on the read-option, completing crashing down on the running back.

This has to kill Kelly, knowing all of the yards that have been left on the field because of Foles' inability to beat teams with his legs. If given the choice between a strong passer and a strong runner, Kelly would likely choose the quarterback that can beat teams from the pocket. But Foles struggling with his accuracy, which we get into below, only highlights the fact that he isn't able to do much else.

Drifts in the pocket

If Foles isn't going to be able to make plays with his legs, he better be pretty sound mechanically and surgical from the pocket. Two things he absolutely was not in 2014.

Foles' habit of drifting back into the pocket increased in 2014. The argument can be made that it was because of the offensive line, but Foles was only hit, hurried or sacked an average of 3.95 more times per game in 2014 than he was in 2013.

Here is a perfect example of how the offensive line didn't always play into the fact that he likes to drift back and throw off of his back foot.

On this key third-down play, Foles has a perfectly clean pocket, and a good two-to-three yards to step up into to deliver an accurate pass. Instead, this is how Foles is standing when he throws the ball, which was incomplete.

Here is Foles both drifting in the pocket and being reckless with the ball, a combination he showed far too often in 2013 and 2014.

This is a problem Foles said throughout the season he can correct, but after plenty of film showing otherwise, it is starting to come off a little bit like Michael Vick saying he will slide.

Injuries:

An assessment of Foles wouldn't be complete without mentioning that despite standing 6-foot-6 and 244 pounds, he has had his fair share of injury problems. As a rookie, Foles broke his hand, and would have missed two-to-three weeks if it wasn't the end of the season. In 2013, Foles suffered a concussion. In 2014, he cracked his collarbone and missed eight games.

The best ability, as Kelly likes to say, is durability.

Accuracy

All of the above flaws and strengths boil down to one clear-as-day fact for Foles — if he is going to succeed in the NFL, he is going to have to be extremely accurate and a nearly flawless decision maker.

For his career, Foles has completed 61.5% of his passes. Anyone who watched the Eagles last season, however, knows that Foles attempted plenty of quick, short passes.

In 2014, 58% of Foles passes were 10 yards from the line of scrimmage or shorter, nearly identical to the 57% in 2013. Over the past two seasons, Foles has hit 79% of his pass attempts traveling 10 yards or shorter, which is key Kelly, who likes to get out quick passes to his receivers in space. That also shows Foles is making the right reads.

The problem? That the good majority of quarterbacks, both starters and backups, can make those throws. It is the longer passes where quarterbacks really show their accuracy, and Foles has struggled to do so the past two seasons.

With Kelly as his head coach, Foles has attempted a total of 240 passes beyond 10 yards, completing only 51% of those passes. That percentage was even worse as a rookie in 2012, coming in at 48%.

His completion percentage of passes 20-plus yards dropped last season, going from 45% in 2013 to 32% in 2014.

Here is a good example of why Foles struggles with his down the field accuracy, and it comes back to mechanics. Foles has a wide open Josh Huff, and if he puts the ball just a little bit more infront of him, it is a touchdown. Instead, it is thrown short.

Yes, the loss of DeSean Jackson and the injuries to the offensive line last season certainly didn't help Foles in his down the field completion percentage.

But if it is going to take one of the best down the field receivers and one of the best offensive lines in the NFL to have your quarterback consistently complete a pass beyond 10 yards, that is a problem. If he is shaken by the fact he is only getting pressured four more times per game than the season before, and it is killing his mechanics, that is an even bigger problem.

Final Stance

The Eagles have shown they can win and be a playoff team with Foles. They very well could win 12 games with him next season. They have yet to show, however, they can be a great team with Foles.

The combination of his his inconsistent accuracy, his losing record against quality opponents and his inability to do much else if he isn't on his game from the pocket makes going forward with Foles risky. If Kelly goes into next season with Foles as his guy, he is hoping Foles can fix the flaws he has shown the past two seasons.

That being said, replacing Foles isn't that simple. The 2015 NFL Draft class is weak at quarterback, and the free agency class is even weaker.

The obvious, optimistic exception is Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota. If the Eagles are offered a trade to draft him, it would be hard to turn down, no matter the price. Foles hasn't shown enough to think that this team is better served using draft picks on defensive players, a common argument from those who don't want to trade up for Mariota.

Mariota is a risk like plenty of prospects before him, and he hasn't shown he can make strong throws into small windows. He is far from a perfect player. But if the Eagles are going to have to coach up a quarterback, they are better off doing it with an elite prospect with more tools than Foles.

To go from a perennial 10-6 team to an elite one, the Eagles don't need a new cornerback or safety.

They either need to pray Foles fixes all of his flaws, or they need to commit all of their resources this offseason to finding a new quarterback.

If not Foles, then who else?

Here is a look at some of the team's options for next season if they don't stick with Foles.

Eagles Quarterbacks 2015 13 Gallery: Eagles Quarterbacks 2015

Eliot Shorr-Parks may be reached at eshorrpa@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @EliotShorrParks. Find NJ.com Sports on Facebook.