Nick Foles had an unforgettable NFL career with the Eagles. But it’s one that doesn’t ‘define him.’

On New Year’s Day in 2023, Larry Foles reached out to his son with a thinly veiled request.

He’d watched Kayvon Thibodeaux fly around the edge and deliver the latest in a long line of excruciating hits his son received over an 11-year career. He also saw the pained reaction that ensued and the injury diagnosis that ruled him out with broken ribs.

“Man, I hope you’re retired,” Larry Foles texted to his son. “You can’t take many more of them.”

It took a little over a year for Nick Foles to officially grant his father’s wish. The former Eagles quarterback, the MVP of the franchise’s lone Super Bowl victory, spent the 2023 season as a free agent and finished 2022 sidelined after the Week 16 matchup between Foles’ Indianapolis Colts and the New York Giants.

The time away made his official retirement announcement last month more of a formality than anything else. He’d already started the next chapter of his life, one that’s been seamless relative to most NFL retirees attempting to find themselves in life after football.

“Football never has and never will define him,” Larry Foles said. “He’s always had multiple things in his life that he juggles that matter and football was just part of it. He realized early on that the NFL — he was around a lot of guys, some of them it did define and others it didn’t, and he learned from that.”

The Eagles will honor Nick Foles on Monday night before their game against the Atlanta Falcons, naming their 2012 third-round pick an honorary captain with plans to celebrate the five years he spent with the team over two stints.

Foles had an unusual career, with historic highs and confounding lows. His father called him a “sleeper,” a quarterback who could bore you for long stretches before turning it on in an instant.

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In his second year, he sent his uniform and cleats to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was traded, benched, and traded again just two seasons later. His career’s beginning and resurrection arrived with the Eagles, as did his brightest moments during the team’s run to Super Bowl LII with him as the improbable hero and backup quarterback.

When reconciling how his son could grow up in Austin, Texas, and spend his college years at Arizona only to develop such a strong feeling of “home” so far away from it, Larry Foles points to the fit between Foles and Eagles fans.

“Sports is such a big part of their lives there,” Larry Foles said. “It’s a very blue-collar town that really appreciates everything that they have. I think, more than anything else, he appreciated that. And you could throw an interception or two and they’d be booing you like crazy, and then you’d throw a 50-yard bomb, they’re cheering you all of a sudden. ... It’s the hunger that Philly fans have and how they show their appreciation.”

Eagles kicker Jake Elliott, one of eight players on the current roster who overlapped with Foles, added, “He’s real, he’s authentic. When you’re authentic and show you care, you show you want what the city wants. I think people resonate with that and appreciate his hard work. They see him work all day. It’s the same thing with [former Eagles center Jason] Kelce, the same thing with a lot of these other guys: When you’re honest, and they see you work, it’s easy to resonate with.”

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Going through the memories of the Eagles’ 2017 postseason run, Larry Foles sometimes feels he still hasn’t completely wrapped his head all the way around it.

“It’s hard to believe we have a son that won the Super Bowl,” he’ll tell his wife, Melissa.

Indeed they do. As he mentioned during an appearance on The Green Light podcast with former Eagles defensive end Chris Long last week, Nick Foles signed with the Eagles before the 2016 season despite a competing offer from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in part because of his familiarity with Philadelphia and the comfortability serving as a backup for Carson Wentz going into his second year.

About 11 months later, Larry Foles watched his kid board the team bus in Minneapolis before Super Bowl LII after a brief conversation ended with an axiom foretelling what was going to come that day.

“This is going to be fun.”

There aren’t many memories from Nick’s career that rival watching him throw for 373 yards and three touchdowns against the New England Patriots while catching another on the now-famous trick play called “The Philly Special” that spurred the Eagles to a 41-33 win.

At least one does come close, though: The time Larry Foles bought a plane ticket to Oakland on a whim to watch his son return from a concussion against the Raiders in 2013. Surrounded by thousands of Raiders fans and quickly outed as “Nick Foles’ dad,” he watched as his son tied the NFL record with seven touchdown passes in a single game and eventually swayed those around him to his side.

“Everybody around me was cheering for Nick to throw the eighth,” Larry Foles said of the Eagles’ 49-20 win. “They knew they were beat, but here are the Oakland fans cheering for Nick to throw the eighth touchdown. And they pulled him. What could have been.”

Now in retirement, Nick Foles has found his first coaching job: coaching girls’ flag football for his daughter Lily’s team.

Emblematic of the line of hats, with “DAD SZN” printed on the front, that he has released with his former Chicago Bears teammate Pat O’Donnell, fatherhood is at the center of Foles’ post-football life along with running, pickleball, and golf.

“That’s the turning of the page,” Eagles tackle Lane Johnson said. “You see guys transition into the next step, he [has] done a good job of preparing stuff for after football while he was playing so it wasn’t such a big shell-shock to him. Much like Kelce. Not everyone’s that fortunate.

“Football was a main focus, but it wasn’t his everything, it wasn’t his identity. A lot of people can’t say that.”

Larry Foles believes his son would make a good coach in the NFL one day, but for now paring the sport down to a kindergarten level seems like good practice.

In a way, Larry Foles said, a full-time parenting role may even be harder than the years spent in the NFL.

“Being a parent is a lot harder than going to practice 12 hours a day with the guys,” Larry Foles said. “I really think it’s a lot easier leaving at 5 in the morning knowing you’re going to go play a game with the guys, get home late, and the wife has done all the work. I think he’s realized that it’s time for him to lend a helping hand and he’s done that in a way that works and he’s getting better at it.”

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While he’s thankful his son left the game “on his own terms,” Larry Foles said he’s eager to see Nick’s return to Lincoln Financial Field for the first time since he was the team’s starting quarterback in 2018.

“It’s going to be a fun Monday, this weekend is going to be fun, just walking around with him and seeing the appreciation when he steps on that field. He hasn’t been back really on that field since 2018. Once he’s seen on that field, it will be pretty special.”

The Eagles play in Week 2 against the Atlanta Falcons. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.