If you read Crossing Broad back in the day, you know Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes was a frequent target of The Maestro. Kyle used to roll out the poop emoji when commenting on Hayes’ articles, be it Eagles, Sixers, whatever.

Marcus hasn’t appeared on CB that much in recent years. He’s still doing his thing at the Inky and now anchors some shifts at 94 WIP, so maybe that portfolio addition of sports talk radio has resulted in a gas stove reignition of sorts, because he served up a hot take on Friday morning.

The article is titled “The Eagles must trade for Nick Foles and demote Joe Flacco, ASAP,” and the premise is basically that Joe Flacco stinks. We’d probably all agree with that. Flacco looked pretty poor last year and the Birds probably aren’t winning anything with him on the field.

Writes Marcus:

There’s a week before the final preseason game, in which Foles should surely play. There’s almost a month before the season opener at Atlanta. Foles must be ready to take over by Sept. 12. It will take at least that long to install the latest iteration of the Philly Special.

Can Foles be ready? Of course. He’s the Ken Jennings of football IQ. Nick’s got all the answers.

He’s a Super Bowl MVP. A Pro Bowl starter And, at 32, he’s never been better.

Just ask him.

“I feel great,” Foles told reporters earlier this month. “The version of me right now is much better than the version that played in the Super Bowl, I’ll tell you that.”

Well, it’s great that he feels that way, but Nick hasn’t been very good lately. He got injured in Jacksonville, came back, then lost his job to Gardner Minshew. He was traded to Chicago, couldn’t beat out Mitch Trubisky for the starting job, eventually got on the field, and then injured his hip. In the past two seasons he’s thrown for 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions while only starting 11 games. He fumbled the ball four times and hasn’t seen his QB rating crest 85.


More from Marcus:

Send the Bears a third-round pick, Howie Roseman. Send your jet to O’Hare Airport, Jeffrey Lurie.

Go fetch Foles.

You can afford it. In fact, you can’t afford not to.

Foles makes $4 million this season, but Flacco makes only $3.5 million, and $7.5 million is chicken feed for two backups. Rest assured: The Eagles will need their backup.

Hurts is mobile. He’s going to get hit. He’s going to get injured. He’s going to miss time.

Hurts is young. He’s raw. He will struggle. He will slump.

In no world should the Eagles send a third round draft pick to the Chicago Bears for Nick Foles. Also, you can’t simply assume that Jalen Hurts is going to be injured. That is just hypothesis based on the fact that he’s a runner and can do things with his feet, but Lamar Jackson has played 30 regular season games in two years and Cam Newton played 15 of 16 last season. Hurts could play every single game or get Hurt standing in the pocket. It’s all random and hypothetical.

Marcus:

Make no mistake: Foles is not anyone’s savior. He would not be coming back to replace Hurts. He should never have replaced anyone. Foles isn’t a starter.

Even in his finest hours, Foles was a short-term answer to long-term problems. That includes his Pro Bowl in 2013, his stretch run and Super Bowl MVP after 2017, and his playoff push in 2018. He has always enjoyed limited success as a limited product of systems tailored to his limited abilities. Given time to prepare, defenses always exploit those limitations.

That’s why Foles foundered in Philly in 2014, flopped in St. Louis in 2015, collapsed in Jacksonville in 2019, and, finally, disintegrated in Chicago last season.

Wait, he collapsed in Jacksonville in 2019 and disintegrated in Chicago last season? I thought we were supposed to trade for him because he’s “never been better” and feels great (according to him). That’s what I read a few paragraphs ago.

Anyway, there was a report from a Chicago insider that Foles didn’t even want to come back to Philly, and if that’s true, I don’t blame him. We don’t need Nick Foles, Act III. He’s been here twice, we won a Super Bowl, built the statue, and now everybody moves on. The Nick Foles chapter in the annals of Philadelphia football is already written. It’s perfect. It does not need to be updated.

Plus, this season is all about evaluating Jalen Hurts and seeing if he’s a franchise quarterback. If he goes down, the season goes to shit anyway, and it doesn’t matter how good the backup is, because this is probably not a playoff team.