Nick Foles injects hope into Eagles’ playoff chase
Well, look who’s back for a December playoff run.
The question is whether Nick Foles might be a week or two too late to save the Eagles the way he did last season — all the way to a Super Bowl victory.
Foles, the Eagles’ backup quarterback to Carson Wentz, helped engineer Philadelphia’s upset victory over the Rams Sunday night in Los Angeles. The Eagles entered the game as 13 1/2-point underdogs, making the win their biggest upset since 1985.
With Wentz out with a fracture in his back, the Eagles got to 7-7 and kept their flickering playoff hopes alive to defend their Super Bowl title.
The Eagles, who play the Texans and Redskins in their final two games, trail the 8-6 Cowboys in the NFC East and the 8-6 Seahawks and 7-6-1 Vikings in the wild-card race with the Redskins also 7-7. The Panthers are 6-7 entering Monday night’s game against the Saints.
So the Eagles must keep winning and hope for help. And they’ll do it with Foles, whom Philadelphia coach Doug Pederson said Monday will start the next game, though Wentz will not be placed on injured reserve.
A year ago, of course, it was Foles taking over for the injured Wentz and leading the Eagles to the Super Bowl title.
Can they do it again? Sunday night was a significant step.
“It was definitely a statement win for us,” Eagles defensive end Michael Bennett told NFL.com after the game. “Hopefully we can ride this wave and maybe get some help and get in … and make some noise.”
Foles completed 24-of-31 passes for 270 yards and an interception in the 30-23 win, and now there are visions of the 2017 season dancing in the heads of hopeful Philadelphians.
“I don’t know what it was [Sunday] night, but we played together,” Foles told NFL.com. “All sides of the ball leaned on one another, and that was great. If you think about what made us special last year, it was that we leaned on one another and picked each other up when we had to. We talked about that this week.”
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Good for Mike Tomlin for resisting the age-old head-coaching flaw of making a knee-jerk decision about his kicker after a bad outing.
Steelers kicker Chris Boswell already was coming off a nightmare finish in Oakland the week before when his plant foot slipped on the terrible turf and he had a potential game-tying field goal blocked to clinch a Raiders win.
On Sunday against the Patriots in a tight game, Boswell missed a 32-yard field goal attempt in the third quarter, his seventh missed field goal attempt on the season to go along with five missed extra points.
When it counted most, though, Boswell booted a fourth-quarter 48-yard field goal to give the Steelers a 17-10 lead that would hold up.
“He’s our kicker from start to finish and I liked the way he came back and banged that next opportunity, and that is what this thing [football] is about,” Tomlin told reporters. “You are going to be tested, we are going to be tested, sometimes you are going to fail but you better pass enough of them.”
Boswell, whose 61 percent field-goal conversion rate this season is second worst in the NFL, was in the Pro Bowl a year ago. Tomlin has opted to trust him rather than look elsewhere with two weeks to go in a playoff push.
“I made that decision when I walked into the stadium with him that he was our kicker and I wasn’t going to play that second-guessing game,” Tomlin said. “We evaluated that process in a very thorough manner. Prior to going into the stadium we had a great deal of comfort with the route that we chose to take.”
It should be noted that Bill Parcells, who famously was very difficult on his kickers, threatened to cut Adam Vinatieri in his rookie season in New England. He never followed though, and Vinatieri has become one of the greatest NFL kickers ever.
This is not to say Boswell is ever going to be viewed in the same regard as Vinatieri, but good for Tomlin for not making a rash decision.
