Left tackle Charles Leno can tell when Nick Foles is feeling it.
When the quarterback has completed a couple passes in a row, he wants Bears coaches to call the play into his helmet quicker. He hustles his linemen to the line of scrimmage and gets his receivers set promptly. Foles will mutter a few words of encouragement to his teammates – “Cmon, guys, let’s get it” — and try to keep the momentum going.
It reminds Leno of a red-hot basketball player calling for the ball.
“He wants to keep that mojo going,” Leno said. “Just like any shooter would.”
Foles is one streaky shooter.
It’s heart-pounding. It’s maddening. It’s won the Bears games. And entering Monday night’s game against the Rams, it’s near the front of a long list of offensive problems the team wants to fix.
“I think offensively right now you could probably characterize us as streaky,” offensive coordinator Bill Lazor said. “I’m not happy about it.”
Foles has played in peaks and valleys in almost every quarter this year. If each game is a rollercoaster, Sunday’s win against the Panthers was the Matterhorn.
He began the game 14-for-17 for 114 yards and a touchdown. Immediately afterward, he went 0-for-7 with an interception. Foles then completed 8-of-9 passes for 77 yards — and then 1-of-6 for seven yards before the final gun.
Foles has done some version of the same thing in every other Bears appearance:
• After entering the Falcons game in the third quarter, Foles put up stretches of 2-for-6 and, later, 2-for-8, only to win the game by finishing 6-for-7 for 80 yards and three touchdowns.
• Facing the Colts in his first start, Foles followed a first-half 1-for-6 stretch — in which he gained six passing yards — with a 5-for-5 run for 82 yards. That run begat a stretch in which he went 2-for-6 for 16 yards. In the second half, Foles went 0-for-7 with an interception — and then, immediately, 8-for-8 for 90 yards and a touchdown to finish the game. Coach Matt Nagy labeled Foles’ garbage-time touchdown as precisely that, though.
• In a prime-time win against the Buccaneers, Foles went 4-for-5 then 1-for-4, then 20-for-23, then 1-for-5, and, finally, 4-for-5. He followed a first-half interception by going 6-for-6. In the second half, he went 7-for-8 for 48 yards — and then 1-for-5 for two yards.
Foles doesn’t want to look for such trends.
“The way I play the game is, it’s ultimately. ‘What is it going to take from my position today to win the game? …” Foles said. “And as I get going and get rhythm and, as an offense, we keep bonding and keep growing, hopefully, the efficiency goes up with the completions and everything.
“But the ultimate goal is always, ‘What it will take to win?’”
Sometimes, the answer is riding a hot hand. The Bears showed off a no-huddle attack last week — one they could revive in Los Angeles — for that very purpose.
“If [Foles] is quote-unquote ‘in the zone,’ throwing it and he’s streaky, we’re gonna continue to do that as long as he’s feeling it,” Nagy said. “But to stay balanced as well.
“Nick and I are both kinda learning through this process as to when he gets hot and how he’s feeling on certain plays, and when we roll with those.”
Those plays keep Foles in rhythm.
“I think the rhythm is more important of a word than streaky,” Nagy said. “Streaky, to me, might sound to a point of it’s really good and then really bad. We don’t want that. We know that it’s important to have a good rhythm. That’s what we’re trying to get after.”
A streaky quarterback and a hot-and-cold offense are two different topics, Lazor argued. Still, it’s impossible to extricate Foles from the scheme. His sample size is large enough. Monday, he’ll make his fourth start, surpassing Mitch Trubisky’s three. He’s completed almost twice as many passes — and attempted 66 more — than Trubisky.
“We’ve had some late-game heroics that have won us some games that we’re happy about,” Lazor said. “But we wish we were not in those positions.”
Foles’ highs have been higher than most to ever play the game. He’s been a Super Bowl MVP. On Dec. 23, 2018, he became the sixth quarterback in NFL history to post two career games with at least 400 passing yards, four touchdowns a completion percentage of at least 70. It was the fourth time — in 53 appearances — he posted at least 400 passing yards. At the time, only two quarterbacks had ever posted more through 53 games: Dan Marino and Matthew Stafford.
Foles’ lows have been lower than most quarterbacks who have had that sort of success. After Foles’ lone Pro Bowl season in 2013, he posted an above-average passer rating only six times over the next three years — while playing for three different franchises.
Rams coach Sean McVay’s team lost to Foles both in 2017 — that was the game he took over for quarterback Carson Wentz after his season-ending knee injury — and 2018. He chooses to see Foles’ streakiness differently.
“This is a guy that, he always play at his best when his best is required,” he said. “And that’s one of the greatest traits you can have as a quarterback.”
He pointed to Foles’ fourth-quarter pass to David Montgomery that set up a Cairo Santos field goal — and a Bears win — against the Buccaneers.
“That drive when you had to have it,” he said. “Recognizing the coverage, he ends up audibling, gets the protection handled, knows who’s going to be [running a hot route] above, and throws a dime on a wheel route out of the backfield that ends up getting [the Bears] in field goal range and wins that game. …
“I’m seeing a guy that makes the plays when it’s most important.”
