Nick Foles a Luxury the Bears Can Afford

The Bears could keep Nick Foles as a third quarterback better than most teams' backups, or they could trade him for a nice return, but either way they come with a win.

Quarterback Dak Prescott has a sore shoulder and his backups in Dallas are Ben DiNucci, Garrett Gilbert and Cooper Rush.

Indianapolis quarterback Carson Wentz has a foot injury and his backup is Jacob Eason. They signed Brett Hundley but, well, he's Brett Hundley, a guy without a start since 2017.

The Jets are going into the season with Mike White and James Morgan as the backup quarterbacks behind rookie Zach Wilson, who didn't sign his contract until a few days ago.

Every time an NFL quarterback injury occurs, the Bears are going to hear it.

Nick Foles is available, and it's true.

"I don't talk to him about that, he doesn't talk to me about it," Bears coach Matt Nagy said. "We just don't go there because, again, that's out of our control.

"He's worrying about doing everything he can to just be great for us and that's what I like about our relationship.

"He's happy with where he's at here and he's in a good place and ... for us we feel like with Andy, Justin and Nick, our quarterback room right now, is pretty good. And you need to have a quarterback in this league to win games."

Nagy said it's easy to understand why trade rumors pop up about Foles.

"Absolutely, and you're talking about a Super Bowl MVP and a guy that's started a lot of games," Nagy said. "He's had a really interesting career in so many ways that I just think that he deserves that. I mean, anybody that's had the career he has is somebody that's always going to be–for all teams, as a third string guy teams are going to look at guys like him."

Foles being traded looks like a distinct possibility at some point, whether it's to one of those three teams or to someone else who finds they need a backup quarterback before the trading deadline.

Sometimes teams wait around thinking a veteran like Foles will be cut and they can sign him for a reasonable price, but because of his restructured contract the Bears would lose $5 million off their cap for this year if he's cut now. Considering they have only $6.03 million available now according to Overthecap.com, that wouldn't be a good situation.

Trading him would save the Bears $4 million in cap space, though.

Foles has only Nagy's admiration for the way he's handled being demoted behind both Andy Dalton and Justin Fields.

"I would say probably 95 percent of people in his situation would handle it completely opposite of the way he's handled it, from the time that I brought him in and told him that he was gonna be the third-string quarterback, and I have to give so much credit to him because he accepted it," Nagy said. "He understood it.

"Was he happy about it? No. But he understood it. Nothing else from the time we got to OTAs until now, we all talked about how impressed we are with how he's handled himself in that role. I mean, every rep he gets—which isn't a lot—but every rep he gets, he acts like he's the first-string quarterback."

He could be a first-string quarterback again at some point this year with another team, if not with the Bears. 

It's the nature of the business, and if an injury occurs they can be thankful they have an accomplished third rather than a Tyler Bray or someone with as little past playing time as Ben DiNucci, Garrett Gilbert, Cooper Rush, James Morgan and Mike White.

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