At some point during Nick Foles' transition from team to team in the NFL, the former Pro Bowl quarterback lost a passion for the game and contemplated retirement. This is according to Foles, who detailed in a video for a devotional series on YouVersion's Bible app his journey from rock bottom back to the field.
"A lot of people don't know this -- I'm going to share this right now, because I think it's important," said the quarterback, one of six current or former Philadelphia Eagles contributing to the series. "After my time with a certain NFL team, I wanted to retire. This was a year ago. I wanted to retire from the NFL, and I really struggled. I couldn't pick up a football for about eight months. I had no love for the game, and it was tough."
Foles' timeline brings the signal-caller's career back to his move from the then-St. Louis Rams to the Kansas City Chiefs, just a year after he and his 27-touchdown all-star season with the Eagles were dealt to Jeff Fisher -- and, soon after, replaced by Jared Goff, the Rams' first-round draft pick. Before the quarterback reunited with ex-Philadelphia coach Andy Reid in K.C., in fact, some were wondering why a veteran with Foles' resume remained unsigned as long as he did.
Now back in Philadelphia as the No. 2 behind Carson Wentz, whose "Audience of One" brand ties right into the Bible app's Christian devotional series, Foles said in the video, his second of three appearances in the series, that his faith drove him back to the game.
"I kept reading scripture, I kept praying, I kept asking God -- and so many of us ask God for signs, we ask God, 'Hey, please just put it on the wall, like, I want to know,' but that's not how it works," Foles said. "He's not always going to do that. He was shaping me. He was bringing me down to my knees ... At that moment, through that prayer, He said, 'Hey, just take a step of faith. 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."
Centering his story on the verse of 2 Corinthians 12:9, the 28-year-old Foles later added that choosing to return to football was the "greatest decision I ever made because of what I went through" and the "completely reinvigorated outlook on the game" that resulted from his struggle.
Originally a third-round draft pick of the Eagles in 2012, he is joined by Wentz, tight ends Trey Burton and Zach Ertz, safety Chris Maragos and former Eagles wide receiver Jordan Matthews in the series.
