How I Became a Fair Weather Eagles Fan and Nick Foles Became Family

Parenthood has a way of making you develop emotional attachment to odd things, like cheap plastic trinkets, songs about using the toilet, and public figures that happen into your sleep-deprived consciousness at serendipitous intervals. Sporting events have a strange ability to unify people who have little in common, and a tendency to freeze moments in time like some kind of psychological amber.

The day my daughter was born, the Philadelphia Eagles were in the midst of the playoff hunt.  I have this vague recollection of walking through the lobby of the maternity ward and seeing a contingent of expectant fathers decked out in green jerseys and cheering at the TV set.  I don’t really remember much else because I was exhausted from hours of listening to my wife scream during labor. I also wasn’t paying that much attention to Philly’s football team.  To be completely honest, while I had been living in Philadelphia for most of my adult life, I wasn’t really an Eagles fan.  Well not yet anyway, again, parenthood can do weird things.

Most people get their sports allegiance from their father, and my dad had exactly zero interest in sports of any kind.  Which means when it came to fandom I was pretty much on my own.  This led to my rooting interest in sports becoming somewhat fluid.  As a small child, I cheered for whatever teams TV and magazines told me to cheer for.  As a teenager, I made a conscious decision to support the local teams close to the region where I grew up.  When I moved to Philadelphia after college, it didn’t seem right to just jump on the Philadelphia bandwagon – especially since the city has a passion for its local teams that rivals religion.  It would have felt fraudulent. I continued to support my old teams for awhile, until it dawned on me that I seriously disliked the area where I grew up, so why continue my affinity for those teams?  So for many years I basically considered myself a sports widow.  My old allegiance was dead and buried, but I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of getting involved with somebody new.  Then I became a father.

My daughter couldn’t even eat solid food when Nick Foles stunned NFL analysts by not just going to the pro bowl, but being named that game’s MVP.  He had started the season a forgotten man on the bench, but an injury to the exciting, and controversial, Michael Vick would force him into action. He became Philadelphia’s starting Quarterback for the final 10 games, and would win 8 of them, throwing 27 touchdowns and only 2 interceptions. This shocking turn of events set the bar pretty high and Eagle fans started to have high hopes for the upcoming season.  First-time NFL coach Chip Kelly had unleashed his innovative college offense on the pros, and turned an unheralded second round pick into the face of the Eagles franchise.

By the time training camp opened that summer, my daughter was crawling at a furious pace.  My wife’s maternity leave had long since ended.  Since I was self-employed at the time, I took on the bulk of the domestic responsibilities, while my wife went and slaved away in the corporate salt mines.  As a kid, I had chuckled at Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom, and now here I was living it out in real time.  It wasn’t quite so funny anymore; in fact it was a little terrifying.  Becoming a parent for the first time is stressful in general, but being the sole person responsible for making sure your infant doesn’t die from sun up to sundown is David Lynch levels of unnerving.  Lack of sleep makes every moment hazy, and confused.  You don’t always know which end is up, and you’re almost always certain something bad is about to happen.

Gradually over time you start to figure things out.  When you first bring a baby home you’re scared of everything.  Even the simplest tasks, like bathing, and doing laundry, seem daunting.  Little by little, necessity forces you to try things, and each successful task completed becomes a small victory that helps rebuild your confidence.  These minor triumphs become important to you.  To an outsider they would seem trivial, but in your subconscious they become building blocks, pieces of a framework that help hold together your new ego.  Like that spelling bee award you won in the third grade, and can still remember years later.  It’s an emblem for an acquired skill that you weren’t entirely sure that you had, but now you have some evidence.  For a new parent, it’s when you change a diaper without getting poop on the carpet, or when you’re able to twist the lid on a bottle of breast milk with only one hand, because your other hand is filled with a screaming infant.  All those moments add up to you regaining belief in yourself as a functional adult; a belief that had been obliterated the moment you were handed an un-finished human that you helped to create and now have the ability to sculpt or destroy.

For me, one of those essential building blocks was the grocery store.  When you leave the house with a newborn, no matter how menial the reason, you feel like an ascent party at Mount Everest; standing by your tent at base camp, looking up at the summit, the snow, the swirling wind, and feeling a sense of dread in the pit of your stomach.  “I don’t know if we can make it“, your brains says. “But we seriously need diapers“, your nose replies. So, you put the kid in a technologically advanced carrying device, and heft a 50lb bag of baby accessories out the door, even though you’re convinced disaster awaits. Thus, the first time I took my daughter to the local supermarket, and we made it in and out, with no tears shed by either of us, I felt a sense of accomplishment that probably rivaled Christopher Columbus dropping anchor in the West Indies.  Not only did that trip to the market go off without any major catastrophe, my wide-eyed little munchkin seemed to downright enjoy it.  She giggled, and cooed, and pointed at boxes of granola bars like a tourist on safari.  The supermarket became a sanctuary of sorts.  It was Mecca.  My daughter and I would make our weekly pilgrimage to nourish our body and soul.  I would gain the satisfaction of, not only gathering food to feed my family, but also entertaining my child for a period of time, and making an agonizingly long day seem a little shorter.  It was here among the aisles of processed food stuffs that I would adopt Nick Foles as my surrogate second child.

Companies, big and small, love to align themselves with sports teams, big and small.  Chances are, near where you live, there is an insurance agent who is “The Official Risk and Indemnity Adviser” for some minor league sports team.  As it turns out, my local grocery is part of the chain that is “The Official Supermarket of the Philadelphia Eagles“.  This means, during football season, the store is decked out in silver and green, and they run promotions where you can get a discount for wearing a team jersey on game day.  After his Cinderella 2013 season, it must have been a no-brainer for the store’s marketing department to make Nick Foles the poster boy for the Eagles’ 2014 season.  There was only one issue: Nick Foles does not have, what they call in the media business, the “It Factor“.

By all accounts Nick is a very nice guy, but he lacks a certain amount of swagger that one generally sees in an NFL quarterback.  As friendly as he may be, charismatic was never a term used to describe him.  In fact, goofy, or dorky, tended to be more appropriate.  Even as he was throwing touchdowns and racking up wins the year before, he was more often compared to the spastic, titular character from Napoleon Dynamite, then to guys like Brett Farve or Joe Montana.  A local graphic artist even designed hilariously ironic T shirts depicting Foles as an over-the-top stud, pimped out with sunglasses, gold chains, and throwing a football that was literally in flames.  The mere juxtaposition of Foles next to the concept of “coolness” results in comedy. Let’s face it, Nick was not exactly cut out to be a corporate spokesman.

But there he was, gazing back at me in cardboard relief, as I filled my shopping cart with produce. As I tried to decide which brand of crackers would be most functional for a kid with three teeth, Nick hovered over the end cap, looking like a cross between Shaggy from Scooby Doo, and some shy boy scout, reluctantly trying to maintain eye contact while soliciting donations for this year’s jamboree.  But I’ve always been a sucker for nerdy types, empathetic of people who don’t seem comfortable in their own skin, so I learned to relish Mr. Foles.  His lack of polish, and complete absence of bravado, made me enjoy him all the more.

A year before my wife got pregnant, I walked away from a long, uninspiring career in media. There are many reasons to hate the media business: long, unpredictable hours, wildly unrealistic deadlines, technology that changes as fast as you can learn it; another reason is the people. Most media types are extremely superficial and take themselves way too seriously. After 15 years of being surrounded by over-dressed, under-handed advertising weasels, and arrogant, wanna-be celebrities, I had gotten burnt out. So I cashed in my pension plan, and used the money to start my own business in a completely unrelated field. This opened the door for my 1980s style domestic comedy role.

A decade of working with people who treated retail advertising with the type of gravitas usually reserved for an attorney trying a murder case, probably helped me to appreciate the sublime gawkiness of Philadelphia’s newest celebrity. It’s hard to explain the joy I felt hearing the supermarket’s retro music play list interrupted by one of his pre-recorded announcements. “I’m Nick Foles…  Quarterback of… your …Philadelphia Eagles…”  You could easily picture Nick’s eyes tracking left to right, as he apprehensively read the copy in some stuffy audio booth. I liked to envision some hyper-emotive marketing director, spewing buzzwords at the guileless jock; Rapidly losing patience while imploring to him to relax, have fun, and “really go for it”; eventually giving up in frustration and dismissing  Foles with an affected “Ok, great job Nick, I think we got what we need.” The awkwardness in his announcements was palatable, yet curiously entertaining, much like the best scenes from Seinfeld or The Office.  Thus, Nick Foles, and his uncomfortable demeanor, became a part of our weekly shopping ritual.  His forced smile and wooden sales pitches became as familiar, and reassuring, as the friendly folks at the deli counter who would give my daughter free slices of cheese.

While the legend of Nick Foles, supermarket icon, grew in my world, the shining star of Nick Foles, franchise quarterback, quickly faded.  After a couple of shaky games to start the season, people began to chalk up his gaudy stats as a byproduct of Chip Kelly’s unorthodox offensive scheme.  A broken collarbone ended his season at the halfway point. When Foles’ replacement – a player famous for losing the ball after running into his own lineman’s butt – finished with nearly identical stats, rumors of a quarterback change began to swirl.  At season’s end, Foles was unceremoniously traded to the Rams for walking injury report, and noted paycheck thief, Sam Bradford.  The clock had struck midnight and Nick had turned back into a pumpkin.

The grocery trips with my daughter would continue.  She would sit there, buckled into the shopping cart, and eat strawberries straight from the container.  I would make faces at her in an attempt to distract her from junk food emblazoned with colorful animated characters.  Seventies AM gold hits would trickle out of the overhead speakers as we casually rolled up and down the aisles.  Each fall, diamond shaped pieces of cardboard with the Eagles logo would dangle from the ceiling, but the life size cardboard cutout of Foles about to launch a pass would not return.  But even as my daughter grew, began speaking in sentences, and started picking out her own flavors of fruit pouches, I knew I would always have a soft spot for the Eagles’ itinerant star quarterback.  He was inextricably linked to this very small, yet very significant, part of my life.

When the Eagles very quietly reacquired Foles before the 2017 season, few people noticed or cared.  But I did.  It was kind of like getting a message from someone who lived across the hall from you in the freshman dorm.  Maybe you were not great friends, but you shared space during a pivotal point in your life, so it’s nice to hear from them and know that they’re still getting along in the world.  My mind drifted back to the super market, and smiled at the idea that Nick Foles was once again a quarterback for “your …Philadelphia Eagles“, even if it was only as a backup.

As that NFL season started to unfold, the citizens of Philadelphia could sense that something was going on.  Philly fans tend to be pessimistic, and prone to believe that cosmic forces are conspiring against them.  But this year, there were telltale signs that, perhaps, the universe might be on their side for a change.  A last minute acquisition from another team’s practice squad nails a 60 yard field goal to defeat a hated rival in week three.  A future hall of Famer, and presumptive playoff roadblock, suffers a major injury in week six.  On top of everything, Carson Wentz, the Eagles’ starting quarterback, was reeling off a Pro-Bowl caliber performance.  By the halfway point of the season, it was assumed that the Eagles would make the playoffs; everyone just wondered how far they could go. Could this finally be THE year?

The Eagles’ offense was racking up points, while their defense was shutting opponents down.  Confidence was high.  So much so, that in the fourth quarter of a blowout win, the Eagles decided to rest their starting QB.  There, in front of 65,000 jubilant fans, Nick Foles trotted out onto the field.  A round of applause went up, not for Foles as a quarterback, but for what he represented – that the win was already in the bag.  I remember being happy for Foles.  Like many football fans, I never really believed Foles had what it took to be a topflight quarterback in the NFL.  But my sentimentality still wanted him to have nice things.  You want to hear from that friend in college that they are happily married, and own a nice house, and that even though they didn’t become the next Bill Gates, like you talked about over bong hits in the dorm, they still make a decent living selling accounting software.

From that point on, I started actively rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles.  Not just rooting for them to win, but vehemently wanting them to steamroll opponents.  I wanted scores so lopsided, that Coach Doug Pederson would be crazy not to bench Carson Wentz in the fourth quarter.  Then Nick Foles could come in and soak up a little secondhand glory.  When it happened again 2 weeks later, I figured he could become a human victory lap, the walking embodiment of the mercy rule; A beacon in shoulder pads signaling that the home team was one step closer to the Promised Land.  He was my adopted son, after all, and I wanted him to have something special to call his own.  I figured he could become a historical footnote to a memorable Philadelphia sports season; a nice little piece of nostalgia, for a nice, if not so glamorous, guy.

Every Monday, as I drove to pick up my daughter from preschool, I would listen to sports talk radio and soak up the excitement that was building in the city.  Pauly from Fishtown would call to wonder why they had to wait till the end of the season to name Wentz the MVP.  Vince from Upper Darby wanted to discuss the appropriate time to book a flight to Minnesota for the Super Bowl.  While I anxiously awaited news of another Nick Foles sighting.

And then it happened: Tragedy.  In week 13, with home field advantage in the playoffs tantalizingly in reach, team leader, presumptive league MVP, and charismatic Marlboro Man, Carson Wentz blew out his knee, ending his season.  A dark cloud hung over Philadelphia that week.  Ironically, the Eagles had won the game, but it seemed they were on the verge of losing the campaign.

But the city wasn’t quite ready to shovel dirt on the season.  There was a glimmer of optimism.  Fans had been riding the success high, and they were not ready to sober up just yet.  The defense had been playing great.  They had already clinched a playoff berth and had a good shot at spending the postseason on their home turf, where the crowd could become a factor.  It could still happen, right?  All they needed was for the backup to manage the game and not make mistakes.  I mean, Nick Foles went to the pro bowl a couple years ago, right? He threw seven touchdowns in a game that one time, right? He can’t be terrible…  Right? The cardboard version of Nick even reappeared at my supermarket. I got a little teary-eyed seeing two-dimensional Foles standing next to a display of nachos and salsa, suited up in Eagle green, ready to go to work. Some hopeful employee had attached a cartoon speech bubble over his helmet that said: “Trust Me“.

There was hope but sphincters were tight – including mine.  Be careful what you wish for.  I wanted Foles to have a nice moment in the sun, but this was something different entirely.  This had the potential to go completely in the opposite direction. Expectations had been severely elevated and too much was riding on this season. The world’s most rabid fan base had seen the Lombardi Trophy on the horizon and now a guy who couldn’t even impress Jeff Fisher was blocking the view. Instead of my surrogate child getting to be the quaint mascot during a championship run, there was the distinct possibility of him becoming the scapegoat who snatched defeat from the jaws of certain victory.  Pour guy.  It just didn’t seem fair.

I started thinking to myself: “OK Nick, just don’t screw this up completely, all you have to do is be the mediocre quarterback that I know you are.  The Eagles can lose, just don’t be the specific reason they lose.  You don’t have to play like an All-Star, just don’t make any glaring mistakes and you can fade off into obscurity with your dignity intact.  That way I can still tell my cute supermarket story at my daughter’s eighth grade graduation when the other dads start talking football.”  But the margin of error was slim, one poorly timed interception, and I’d have to take my Foles fondness to the grave with me.

The next two months were an emotional roller coaster for everyone in Philadelphia.  And while I shared all the twists and turns with the rest of the Eagles faithful, we were invested for different reasons.  For the lifelong residents of Philadelphia, the generational fans that had been born into it, raised in it by parents and grandparents, they were rooting for redemption.  I was routing for preservation.  The fans that had bled green their whole lives wanted that first Super Bowl trophy so that the rest of the country would stop viewing them as second class.  They needed a back-up QB to succeed to help justify the years they had spent communing with family and friends over the game of football.  I needed Nick Foles not to fail in order to preserve a quirky, but deeply sentimental memory.

My daughter had just turned four when the Eagles appeared in Super Bowl 52.  I sat down to watch the game with a sense of ease.  My boy Nick was pretty much off the hook at this point.  Nobody had really expected the team to make it this far after losing Wentz, and Foles had strung together some pretty nice playoff performances.  Besides, they were facing the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl; the most successful dynasty the NFL had ever seen, led by probably the greatest coach and quarterback in football history; certainly no one could completely blame a second string quarterback for losing to these guys.  When the Eagles ran the trick play that would become known as the “Philly Special“, my wife was upstairs reading bedtime stories to my daughter.  I let out an audible yelp, as Foles caught a touchdown pass thrown to him by their second string tight end.

A legend was born – A backup quarterback, catching a touchdown pass from a backup tight end, on a play that started as a handoff to an un-drafted rookie running back, on fourth down no less, in the Super Bowl.  A few minutes, later my wife came down asking what the noise was about.  I tried to explain it to her, but I couldn’t really.  There was no way to explain how that one play cemented everything, that the outcome of the game no longer really mattered, at least not to me; because win or lose, Foles would always have that shining moment.  My memory was protected.  My tiny piece of parental sentimentality was now safely stored in the bubble wrap of one of the most ridiculously gutsy sports moments in history.

I couldn’t explain the importance of that one play to my wife that night.  A few days later, I also couldn’t explain to her why I wanted to take our daughter down to the parade.  The prospect of dragging a four year old on the subway, to cram the sidewalks of south Broad Street with, a million-or-so, crazed Eagles fans, celebrating the team’s first Super Bowl Championship, seemed patently ludicrous to her.

“She’s only four. She doesn’t know anything about football,” my wife said “…or care.”

“I know.” I replied “But this is a moment, a moment people in this town will be talking about for a long time.”

I’ve heard that four is roughly the age when most kids start to form memories.  I don’t know if my daughter will remember the parade.  I don’t know if she’ll remember our trips to the super market, or the elderly cashier who always gave her stickers, or me singing Jim Croce songs to her while trying to remember what size diapers she was in that week.  I doubt she’ll remember the cardboard cutouts of Nick Foles, and his awkward in-store announcements. But, I will remember it all.

I don’t know if she’ll care about football when she grows up. She might move away from Philadelphia as an adult, but I think she’ll at least have a certain attachment to the city from her childhood. And I hope, years from now, when she comes across the pictures of herself frolicking in green and white confetti in the middle of Broad Street, she’ll understand that the parade wasn’t simply about a football game, a sports franchise, or even an entire fan base breathing a collective sigh – it was about me and her, and a special time together.  And hopefully she’ll know to appreciate moments in life, the big ones, and even the silly little ones that don’t seem important until years later.