USA Today
Why Trade for Nick Foles Is One Bears Should Avoid
If the Jacksonville Jaguars are going to trade Nick Foles and they contact the Chicago Bears, general Ryan Pace should only do it if he can give up a fifth-round draft pick or worse for the acquisition.
Why the Jaguars stepped in it in the first place by signing Foles to an $88 million deal is their problem, and the Bears don't need to make it theirs by stepping in the same mess.
Unless it's the goal of the Bears to have a backup quarterback to Mitchell Trubisky who costs them $15 million a year in cap space, then they should completely avoid this.
Sure, Foles won a Super Bowl in 2017 with the Philadelphia Eagles and was MVP, and his quarterbacks coach then was new Bears quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo. And they did it in an offense under Doug Pederson patterned after Kansas City's, as the Bears offense is.
DeFilippo did coax an outstanding year out of Foles, as did new Bears offensive coordinator Bill Lazor in 2013 on the coaching staff of Chip Kelly with the Eagles. And Foles also worked with Matt Nagy in Kansas City for a year as a sub.
The trouble is, through most of the rest of his career Foles has been a mediocre quarterback or even bad. Foles has never played a full 16-game schedule as starter, hasn't even played more than 11 games in a season, hasn't started more than six games in a season since 2015, and has registered a passer rating higher than 84.6 only three times in an eight-year career.
Both Pace and Nagy stressed at their season-ending press conference how the biggest thing they need to see from Trubisky is more consistency, and hammered that word home. And now they need to bring in a veteran quarterback who has been the epitome of inconsistency for $15 million a year?
Hardly.
DeFilippo is known for being able to groom young quarterbacks. Supposedly Nagy has done this with Patrick Mahomes, and Lazor is said to also have this skill.
What the Bears should do then is draft a quarterback for all of them to groom. They've already stated their plan to have Trubisky starting at quarterback in 2020. So they should do it and let him work with DeFilippo, and also have a younger quarterback working with them.
The Jaguars drafted Minshew in the sixth round last year and let DeFilippo groom him, and he wound up totally outplaying Foles while winning half his 12 starts.
It's a less expensive plan to get a young quarterback in the second round, someone Nagy likes because he didn't get to be a part of selecting Trubisky in the first place.
Drafting a young quarterback in the second round, a Jake Fromm or someone of comparable skill level, would give them a chance to develop a young talent while keeping their salary cap structure intact without bringing in a player whose career has been a roller coaster ride of inconsistency.
Twitter@BearsOnMaven
