We don’t know.

The question is whether Nick Foles is a franchise QB. Everyone would love an answer to this and tries so skew the weekly performance of Foles into a definitive answer. You can guess. You can make predictions. The bottom line is that you simply don’t know.

Foles is in his third season. He has started 20 games.

At this point in his career, Steve Young looked like a huge bust. Terry Bradshaw had 19 TD passes…and 46 INTs. Daunte Culpepper looked like a potentially elite QB. Brian Griese looked like John Elway’s successor and a star in the making.

Just think about Drew Brees. At the end of 2003, he had been in the league for 3 years. He had shown potential, but had a losing record and more INTs than TDs. The Chargers got a high pick in the 2004 draft and spent that on Philip Rivers. Brees then had a breakout year in 2004 and looked like a star. His play regressed a bit in 2005 and he hurt his shoulder. The Chargers let him go and moved on to Rivers. Brees got to New Orleans and proved to be a perfect fit for that city and that team. He’s now on his way to the Hall of Fame.

Foles has looked great at times, but we need a larger sample size. We just don’t know what he is right now.

Even if Foles leads the Eagles to the Super Bowl this year, that doesn’t mean he’s a franchise QB. One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or possibly a superhero sent from another planet to save the Earth. But not necessarily a franchise QB. I think you need sustained excellence to be a franchise QB. That takes time. I think it will be late in 2015 before we start to know the answer to the question.

I’m not saying you can’t debate the topic. We’re football fans and arguing is what we do best. Just know that you need to wait a bit before getting confirmation of your brilliant/idiotic opinion.

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Speaking of Mr. Foles…I enjoyed his press conference from yesterday. Nick knows he stunk on Sunday. He knows he’s been erratic this year. He’s not hiding from that. He talked about the need to improve his accuracy on downfield throws. Reporters are looking for a smoking gun as to why he’s been so off-target. I haven’t seen one answer. It really does look like a combination of things, but as he explained, he’s just missing his guys.

Shooters go into slumps in basketball. Hitters go into slumps in baseball. Right now Nick is in a deep ball slump. There isn’t a glaring mechanical issue. He just needs better accuracy and touch. Nick and the coaches will keep working on things until he gets back into a groove.

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Bill Davis had another strong PC himself. I love the fact that Davis isn’t looking for excuses. Everyone is dying for him to say that his players have been on the field too much due to offensive struggles and that’s hurting the defense. Davis continues to say that the biggest issue is that the defense isn’t getting off the field when they’ve got a chance. If the defense gets stops, they are off in 3 plays. That’s on them to do that.

It was interesting to hear Davis talk about the decision to push back SF and give them another shot at 3rd down. He wanted that. This wasn’t Chip rolling the dice on his own. The coaches thought the risk was worth it. Davis was then honest in explaining that the offense made a great call and ran the ball to the outside when his blitzers were unfortunately coming up the middle. No coach is right all the time. You have to take some chances and sometimes the other guy is going to burn you. That happened on that sequence. You don’t cry about it. Tip your hat to the other guy and move on.

As Davis explained, the big problem with the run defense was setting the edge. The Niners inside run game was held under control. They burned the Eagles to the outside. This happened in Indy as well. There are some plays when it isn’t obvious to me who has contain. It seems like maybe some coaches found certain looks where the Eagles get into an alignment and struggle with setting the edge. There were other plays when it was clearly defined and the perimeter players just didn’t get the job done.

Davis, the defensive staff and Kelly all hate when teams can get wide. They will work hard to fix this.

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