The Chicago Bears have parted ways with a former Super Bowl Most Valuable Player.
The Bears agreed to release quarterback Nick Foles, NFL Network's Mike Garafolo reported Saturday, via Foles' agent Justin Schulman. Chicago officially released him Sunday.
First-year general manager Ryan Poles and the Bears decided to allow Foles to find a new team rather than continue to search for a trade partner, Garafolo added.
"Ryan Poles did the classy thing and Nick appreciates it," Schulman told Garafolo.
Former Bears general manager Ryan Pace and former Chicago head coach Matt Nagy traded for Foles ahead of the 2020 season to give Mitchell Trubisky a little competition and hopefully get the best out of both or either of them. The move just muddied a murky Bears offense. When Chicago signed Andy Dalton and drafted Justin Fields prior to the 2021 campaign, Foles was simply hanging around as an overpriced third-stringer. That would've likely been the same situation this season with Fields as the next hope at QB1 and Trevor Siemian having been signed to be the backup. Thus, the Bears looked for a trade partner, but never found one.
Foles would've been a $10.66 million cap hit this season. His pre-June 1 release, comes with a cap savings of $3 million, but a dead cap number of $7.66 million, per Spotrac.
The 33-year-old Foles began his career in 2012 with the Philadelphia Eagles, but it was in his second stint with the club that he became a Philly sports legend. Foles won the Super Bowl MVP when he led the Eagles to a win over the New England Patriots for the franchise's only Super Bowl in 2018. However, with Carson Wentz as the anointed franchise QB of the future (spoiler alert: that didn't work out), Foles' days with the Eagles ended when he signed a lucrative deal to become the Jaguars' franchise quarterback. Injuries and sub-par play ended Foles' days in Duval, though, and he was shipped to Chi-Town. Now, he'll be looking elsewhere.
With Foles having played for five teams in his nomadic career, potential landing spots could be with previous coaches, such as Frank Reich in Indianapolis, Doug Pederson in Jacksonville or Andy Reid in Kansas City.
An all-time great as a backup and a repeatedly underwhelming franchise quarterback, Foles marches on with a statue in Philly and missed chances in Jacksonville and Chicago most recently.
He can now decide what's next on his own terms after a classy move by the new-look Bears regime.
