Wentz, a potential MVP, is out, but Eagles can follow the same script with Foles

Carson Wentz was an MVP candidate before he blew out his ACL against the Rams. But that play, the effort that he gave and what he was doing in extending the play, symbolizes what has made him who he is this year.

I think he’s a better athlete than most people give him credit for. He does a great job of not only going through his reads and making good decisions, but if a play is not there he has been able to get away from pressure and make throws down the field.

He keeps his eyes down the field much better than he did last year, looking for the big play. He almost relishes when the play breaks down and he can go out and make defenses pay. His downfield throws have improved greatly. All those reasons are why he was an MVP candidate and why the Philadelphia Eagles before his injury were my favorite in the NFC.

But I still think they are a solid football team, and they don’t have to change a lot of their offense with Nick Foles at quarterback.

If I’m sitting in the meeting room as the Eagles figure out a game plan, I don’t know that it looks much different than it has the past few weeks.

They do a great job with their run-pass option game. It’s phenomenal. When there’s a run play called, there also are tags to individual receivers or to a group of receivers on the back side or front side of runs where a throw can be made quickly.

It’s much like what Chip Kelly does and what Oregon has done, and has transitioned into the NFL game. For Kansas City and now Philadelphia, with Doug Pederson coming to the Eagles from the Chiefs, they’re having great success at it.

Nick did a good job with it the other day, doing some of it right off the bench.

But he has been there before. He was in Philly with Chip in 2013 when he had 27 touchdown passes and two interceptions. He played incredibly well. The ironic thing is that a lot of what Chip did, which kind of caught the league by storm, they do a lot of that now in Philly with the run-pass options. It’s very similar. You watch what they do on first and second downs and even short yardage on third downs, and there are a lot of options for the quarterback to either hand it off, keep it, throw it quick on a screen, or push it down the field with some good pass concepts.

A lot of those elements from when Nick was successful with the Eagles are still there.

That’s the cool part of the story. This could be very similar to what he did a few years ago. If you look at when he came into the game the other day, he made some great plays and some really good throws, clutch throws on third down.

I think they can continue doing that.

People will point to the yardage Carson had running the football, and the Eagles are going to lose that. They might not get a lot of the dynamic plays and the stuff that Carson can give them. But I think Nick has enough experience and he’s accurate enough to lean on that and make that more of his strength.

And Nick doesn’t have to win 10 games. He has to win one more to get a first-round bye and to play at home in the playoffs, and then you’re just two games away from the Super Bowl.

He just has to go out and do his job and let the rest of those guys pick up the slack.

We’ve seen this happen before. You can go all the way back to the Giants with Phil Simms and Jeff Hostetler. It has happened more than just that occasion.

We saw Frank Reich with Jim Kelly go through a very similar scenario with the Bills, and Frank Reich is coordinating the offense for the Eagles now.

They’re not going to shy away from this opportunity to rally the troops and get Philly and the Philly fans going.

If there can be a silver lining to Carson being out for the year, it’s the structure and that Nick has played a lot of football. He has a lot of experience with this coaching staff and in this city.

The way they’re approaching it is exactly the way you have to approach it – we just go on, we don’t change what we do. I think they’ll be fine. Nick can handle it.

Do I think they will win the Super Bowl? Probably not. There are a lot of good teams in the NFC, and if they do get there they probably run into Pittsburgh or the Patriots. But I wouldn’t write them off just yet.

Question of the week

From Sam Lukes: Your brother Derek once threw a football from a Bakersfield housetop, right through a distant basketball hoop that he could not see! Was that extraordinary feat for real?

It’s real. What happened, we were hanging out, had some family and friends over for a barbecue, and we were in the pool just throwing the football around. Around that time, there were trick shots that had started showing up online, on YouTube and stuff, and Derek was like, “I can easily make one of those. It’s not even that hard.” I have a basketball hoop in my driveway and Derek said, “I can throw it in there from here.” I thought, “Let’s see if we can even get it over the house and land in the general vicinity of the driveway.” I sent my son Austin out as a spotter, and Derek from my pool throws it. It lands in the driveway, right by the basketball hoop, and then it’s “Oh yeah, he can totally do it.”

So he gets out of the pool and goes over to where he’s standing when we shoot the video. He’s about to throw it, and I’m like, “Hold on, dude, I have to go up and film this because if you make it, no one is going to believe that you made it if I film from here and we can’t see the hoop.” I have to go up on the house. So I threw that stupid Captain America towel on my head because I thought I was going to be up there for an hour – I knew he wasn’t going to stop throwing the ball until he made it. I hop up there, turn on my phone and the first one he throws goes straight off the backboard and in. No one on his side of the house saw that the ball went in, but my other brother Darren was down there by the hoop and he’s screaming, I’m screaming, and Derek just has to believe that he made it. It was nuts.

I literally thought I was going to be up there all day and it was 100 degrees in Bakersfield. But when I got up on top of the house I kind of lined him up, “OK, dude, right here … ” I picked out a tile or a pipe coming out of the roof and I’m like, “If you throw it right over this you’ve got it,” and he nailed it. That’s how it went down.

This story was originally published December 13, 2017 at 12:57 PM with the headline "Wentz, a potential MVP, is out, but Eagles can follow the same script with Foles."