It's time for the Eagles to cash in on that insurance policy.
They won't have their MVP candidate to start the 2018 season, so they'll have to settle for the reigning Super Bowl MVP.
Carson Wentz, who suffered an ACL and LCL tear on Dec. 10, will not play in Thursday's season opener, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network. That means it's the Nick Foles Show.
This is why the Eagles kept Foles on their roster. This is why they paid him more money. This is why they didn't trade him.
Foles, 29, had a brilliant postseason last year and helped the Eagles hoist the Lombardi Trophy after Super Bowl LII.
But he looked shaky at best this preseason. Foles completed 61.5 percent of his passes for 171 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions this preseason. He and the first-team offense started to get into a rhythm on a couple drives against the Browns, but then turned the ball over. Foles had said he wanted to get into a feel of the game, but he was unable to put up any points.
That is reason for concern.
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But there are reasons to not push the panic button too.
First, is that the offense was incredibly vanilla during the preseason. Doug Pederson said as much and pointed out that the team didn't even get into the RPO game, something that really helped Foles and got him into a rhythm last year.
The other reason to not push the panic button is because this is what Foles does. He has terrible games and then follows them with gems. He's been up and down like that for his entire career.
Even last season, he looked shaky at the end of the regular season and then played great in the playoffs and ended up earning the MVP award of the Super Bowl.
With Foles locked in as the starter for Thursday's game against the Falcons, he'll also get the full complement of first-team reps, which ought to help him get ready too. Foles and Wentz had been splitting first-team reps the last couple weeks.
