Nick Foles

About Nick Foles

Nick Foles was a backup quarterback who caught a touchdown pass in the Super Bowl and became a permanent fixture in Philadelphia mythology. The run itself was impossible. Carson Wentz tore his ACL in December 2017, Foles took over, the Eagles limped into the playoffs as underdogs, and then Foles played the best three-game stretch of quarterback football anyone in Philadelphia had ever seen. He threw for 373 yards against the Patriots in the Super Bowl. He caught a touchdown on the Philly Special, lining up as a receiver and hauling in a pass from Trey Burton on a play that should not have worked. He won Super Bowl MVP. He was a backup less than a month earlier.

The nickname the internet gave him tells you everything about how Eagles fans processed what happened. "Big Dick Nick" is not something you'd print on a family-friendly t-shirt, but Philly printed it on approximately ten thousand of them. The name stuck because the run was so absurd, so improbable, and so clutch that only an R-rated nickname could capture the energy. Foles later bounced to Jacksonville, Chicago, and Indianapolis, never recapturing the magic, and that only made the Super Bowl run more legendary. He wasn't a Hall of Fame quarterback. He was a perfectly average NFL player who, for three weeks in January and February 2018, played like the best quarterback alive. Then he went back to being Nick Foles. Philly will never forget those three weeks.

Last updated: April 2026