For most of his career, quarterback Nick Foles has succeeded coming off the bench in a reserve role. But when the Chicago Bears traded a fourth-round pick for Foles’ services, it was clear that Foles wasn’t being brought in with the sole intention of serving as a backup quarterback.
General manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy made that blatantly clear when they revealed that there would be an open competition for the starting quarterback job between Foles and Mitchell Trubisky.
“I’m excited for this opportunity,” Foles said Friday during a conference call with reporters, via ChicagoBears.com. “Going through my career, it’s been an interesting curve. It’s been all over the place, which has honestly allowed me to go through a lot of different things and gain a lot of wisdom from it.
“But the opportunity to be a full-time starter and make it through a season and do those things is something I think any player would love to do in the right situation. So this opportunity to have that, I’m excited for it, I really am.”
Shortly after Foles was traded to Chicago, he reached out to Trubisky to introduce himself and the two got off on the right foot ahead of their competition.
“Mitch has been there for several years and knows this offense really well, the Chicago version,” Foles said. “But I’ll be competing and it’ll be a healthy competition. Mitch and I have already talked and we wanted to start out on the right foot because ultimately it’s about the Chicago Bears and it’s not about the egos of the quarterbacks.”
While there’s no clear-cut frontrunner to win the starting job right now, although there’s a point to be made for both, Foles made it clear that, regardless of who wins the starting job, that whoever does will have the full support of the other.
“Him and I were able to start out on the right foot with our discussions,” Foles said. “And ultimately it’s going in there and doing our jobs and supporting each other and the guy who can lead the team will lead the team, no matter who that is. If it’s Mitch, I’m going to be there to support Mitch. And if it’s me, I know that Mitch will be there to support me.”
Nagy said that the competition will play into the preseason, where Foles and Trubisky are expected to get equal reps. This quarterback competition only serves to better both Foles, Trubisky and, most importantly, the Bears.
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