Before He Became the Eagles' Backup Plan, Nick Foles Was Working on His Backup Plan

Before his return to Philly, and after disappointing stints in St. Louis and Kansas City, the quarterback was eyeing post-football life

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MINNEAPOLIS — Nick Foles has a good idea of what he wants to do after football. That’s because he confronted the question head-on about two years ago.

The devoutly religious Foles said on a Christian devotional video series back in September that he considered retirement between his stints with the St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs. He talked about a search for answers. “At that moment, through that prayer, He said, ‘Hey, just take a step of faith,’” Foles said in the video, via CBS. “You’re either going to stop playing the game of football and you’re going to go onto a different area of your life and I’m going to be with you, I’m going to be the most important thing in your life, or you’re going to step back into football and you’re going to continue to play and I’m going to be with you every step of the way and you’re going to play to glorify me.”

It’s not hard to imagine a world where Foles is out of the game altogether this year, rather than serving as the most improbable starting quarterback in recent Super Bowl history. If that reality were true, what would he have been doing?

“I’ve always wanted to—right now, I go to seminary, so maybe being like a high school pastor or something. I grew up in the restaurant business and that’s always something I wanted to do," Foles said Tuesday. "My dad’s done it well—he’s 71 years old now and he’s one of my heroes. So, watching him, the ability to work with him is something I look forward to doing some day. And, you know, I’ve already started that process slowly.

“But, when you’re playing in the NFL, you can only do this for a short period of time … that’s where preparing for that end comes in. That’s what I enjoy, in the offseason, taking classes, it makes it easy to go play. It helps me as a person.”

Foles, by the way, could not make online classes this semester because they started on Jan. 16.

“I was a little busy,” he said.

As for the restaurant business, his father, Larry, would provide a pretty good starting point. Back in 2011, he and a partner sold a chain for roughly $60 million.

It’s always good to have options.

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