Philadelphia Eagles: Andy Dalton is the anti-Nick Foles

While Andy Dalton and Nick Foles are both fringe-starting quarterbacks, comparing the Dallas Cowboys’ new backup to the Philadelphia Eagles’ lone Super Bowl MVP is crazy.

On a day typically reserved for speculation about the 2020 NFL schedule and where/when each team will play, Stephen Jones found a way to hijack the news cycle by comparing his team’s newest addition, backup quarterback Andy Dalton, to everyone’s favorite Philadelphia Eagles backup quarterback-turned-Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles.

Sidebar: We’ve written previously about how ‘Jerry Jones is a master of the news cycle‘ for his uncanny ability to keep the Dallas Cowboys relevant with talking points on even the slowest of news days, so I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised.

Now on paper, the comp made a little bit of sense, as when the Eagles signed Foles in 2017, he was a failed starter on his third team in as many seasons looking to return to the familiarity of his ‘home’ team, but outside of both players being ex-starters turned NFC East backups for 2016 drafted franchise quarterbacks, there isn’t a whole lot of similarities between the two.

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But frankly, I’d like to take that notion a step further. Outside of both being NFL quarterbacks a few years removed from Pro Bowl appearances, Andy Dalton is sort of the anti-Nick Foles.

Allow me to elaborate.

You see, Foles is a 31-year-old Day 2 quarterback who found some initial success as a rookie, before turning in a massive 2014 season forever kept in the halls of Canton, Ohio thanks to an eight touchdown performance against the then-Oakland Raiders and a 28-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio that will be incredibly hard for any other quarterback to surpass anytime soon. From there, Foles regressed to the norm, was traded to the then-St. Louis Rams, and had to back up Alex Smith in Kansas City before finally returning to South Philly as the clear number two behind – fittingly enough – a promising sophomore quarterback by the name of Carson Wentz.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Foles took over for Wentz midway through the team’s Week 14 bout against his former team the Rams, went 5-1 down the stretch, and according to Shannon Sharp, put on the two best games in the modern NFL-era to bring the first-ever Lombardi Trophy back to South Philly.

Foles then followed up his postseason heroics with a fitting encore in 2018; an encore that almost had the very same ending had it not been for an incomplete pass off the fingers of Alshon Jeffery.

Dalton’s career, by contrast, is somehow more and less prolific than that of Foles, if that’s even possible.

Drafted one year before Foles with the 35th overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, Dalton hit the ground running as a rookie signal-caller for Marvin Lewis and the Cincinnati Bengals; starting all 137 games he appeared in for the franchise including a trio of Pro Bowl appearances in 2011, 2014, and 2016.

Dalton was as surehanded as they come for the Bengals. He recorded five-straight winning seasons to start out his career, and in all but one of which he completed more than 60 percent of his passes and had over 20 touchdowns. While the gunslinging habits he picked up at TCU remained with him well into his professional career, as Dalton has thrown double-digit interceptions in all but two of his professional seasons – including a somehow-not-league-leading 20 in 2013 – his ability to keep the Bengals in-game without having to do too much.

But there’s the thing about Dalton, he was good enough to remain the team’s unquestioned starter, weathering potential coups like the additions of A.J. McCarron and Jeff Driskel to remain the team’s starter – at least until Zac Taylor came to town in 2019.

Despite having a few offers to play elsewhere – and potentially even compete for a starting role – Dalton chose to stick out the 2020 NFL season close to home in Dallas, regardless of whether or not he’ll play a snap behind Dak Prescott.

That, my friends, is the reason Dalton and Foles aren’t really comparable: they simply don’t have the same makeup.

Say what you will about Foles as a full-time, 16 game starter, a role we admittedly haven’t seen him fill since, well, ever, but he has an uncanny lack for rallying the troops when the chips are down to make magic happen under pressure. By contrast, Dalton has never won a single playoff game and never seemed all that upset when his team was stuck in the muck of a near half-decade losing streak since 2016. By forgoing a chance to go to a team like the New England Patriots or the Jacksonville Jaguars – who, just for clarification may not have even offered him a deal – Dalton is effectively accepting his role, cashing his check, and hoping that 2021 is a better market for a low-level NFL starter.

Foles left what could have been the easiest life imaginable as the Eagles’ version of Frank Reich to take another chance at a starting role in order to prove he was capable of willing his own team to a winning record. That obviously didn’t work, but you have to appreciate the ambition, right?

Or hey, maybe some weird fringe speculation is true and the Jones family has promised Dalton a chance to start once they move on from Prescott once and for all – an idea suggested by Shannon Sharp’s Undisputed co-host Skip Bayless. I mean, no, probably not, but stranger things have happened.

Next. Jerry Jones is a master of the news cycle. dark

Could Andy Dalton come in as a reliever for the Dallas Cowboys in 2020 and pull off a Nick Foles-esque run down the stretch, through the playoffs, all the way to the Super Bowl? Sure, as things presently stand, Dalton is a top-5 backup quarterback in the league right now, but to compare him to the Philadelphia Eagles’ only Super Bowl MVP feels just wrong, as he just doesn’t have the IT-factor that made Foles a hero in Philadelphia.

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