Kevin Kolb

STEPHENVILLE, Texas - It stands there alien in this world of Cowboys. Planted off Route 377, just a football throw from one of the many ranches that dot the Lone Star landscape, is a billboard as unfamiliar in these parts as the sight of a UFO in Philadelphia. The idea behind the sign is not foreign in this football-crazed state. It proudly celebrates a hometown boy - a quarterback, no less - who made it all the way to the NFL. Splashed across the top of the standard-size billboard are the words, "Welcome to Stephenville.

Have either of you guys seen anything from Kevin Kolb that leads you to believe he can get the Eagles a win on Sunday? Or a touchdown? I realize we haven't seen much of him yet, but he's been out there long enough where we ought to have seen a spark, a glint, a glimmer, something promising. To me, this guy looks like he couldn't back up Bobby Hoying. For perhaps the first time in our respective 40-year careers, I find myself in complete agreement with Frank. . . . Other than throw interceptions and fumble, Kevin Kolb remains a complete mystery.

On Sunday against the Cowboys, Nick Foles made his NFL debut by replacing injured starting quarterback Michael Vick with 7 minutes, 41 seconds left in the second quarter. On Nov. 23, 2008, against the Ravens, Kevin Kolb got his first significant NFL playing time by replacing struggling starting quarterback Donovan McNabb to open the third quarter. Their results were similarly unsuccessful. Outcomes: Sunday, Cowboys 38, Eagles 23; Nov. 23, 2008, Ravens 36, Eagles 7. Foles' numbers: 22-32-219, 1 TD, 1 INT. Kolb's numbers: 10-23-73, 0 TD, 2 INT. Foles' bright spot: He completed a 44-yard TD pass to Jeremy Maclin early in the third quarter to give the Eagles a 14-10 lead.

POSITION: Backup quarterback HEIGHT, WEIGHT: 6-3, 218 AGE: 24. BIRTHDATE: Aug. 24, 1984. HOMETOWN: Victoria, Texas COLLEGE: Houston YEARS PRO: 2 HOW ACQUIRED: Drafted by the Eagles in the second round (36th overall) in 2007. THIS YEAR: Has appeared in five games in relief of Donovan McNabb, with four interceptions in 34 attempts. NEXT YEAR: That's going to be the big question this offseason, isn't it? EARLY EXPOSURE: As a 5-year-old, Kevin would hang around the middle-school team coached by his father, Roy. "I was always in the locker room," Kolb said.

Eagles starting quarterback Kevin Kolb - who grew from humble, hog-hunting roots into a man anointed by Andy Reid and the organization as the heir to a kingdom with no crown - is dead. He passed away not long after executing his duties as team leader and the face of the franchise for less than a half of one football game. He is survived by anger, betrayal, pity, and doubt, as well as his immediate relative, Eagles backup quarterback Kevin Kolb - a man who bears a striking resemblance to his kin but who recently suffered a horrible setback in life that left him cut off at the knees.

TEMPE, Ariz. - His detractors regard Arizona quarterback Kevin Kolb as more of a liability than an asset. Since the Eagles traded him to the Cardinals on July 28, 2011, Kolb has spent more time in the training room than displaying efficiency on the football field. Kolb missed Arizona's game against the Eagles last November when he was sidelined by a turf toe and missed the final three games of 2011 because of head trauma and the effects of a concussion. Now the 28-year-old Texas native is out indefinitely with rib-cartilage damage.

ONCE UPON a time, the Eagles took a quarterback in the second round of the NFL draft, a quarterback named Randall Cunningham. It was 1985. The incumbent starter at that point was Ron Jaworski, age 34. Jaworski had played in a Super Bowl and had been ridiculously healthy before suffering a broken leg toward the end of the previous season. The day of the draft, Cunningham was described as a strictly for-the-future guy. As coach Marion Campbell said, "It's no secret we're looking for a young quarterback.

GLENDALE, Ariz. - They will forever be intertwined, Kevin Kolb and Michael Vick. They are disparate quarterbacks in many ways and have had dissimilar careers, but Kolb and Vick are the only ones that know what it was like to live through the 2010 season when Andy Reid benched one for the other. Kolb handled his demotion with class. So it was no surprise that he did not gloat Sunday after he led the 3-0 Cardinals past an Eagles team that has a serious problem at the position he plays.

When it comes to Kevin Kolb, there are two possibilities. He is the luckiest unlucky guy in the NFL, or he is the unluckiest lucky guy in all of football. Take your pick. It is hard to remember, or even imagine, a player enjoying such spectacularly good fortune while enduring so many unfortunate bad breaks. From the time the Eagles took Kolb in the second round of the 2007 draft, his career has been defined much more by goings-on in front offices and meeting rooms than on the field.

Second in the season-preview series. WACO, Texas - If he could have, Kevin Kolb would have followed Art Briles to this south Texas town, home of Baylor University. Twice before in the life and football times of Kolb, he trailed after this Svengali-type coach - first to Stephenville High School and then to the University of Houston. On both occasions, Kolb had to make gut-wrenching decisions. But the road shared by these two Texas slingers, separated only by time and now thousands of miles, had to eventually hit a fork.

Ex-Eagle Kevin Kolb is getting another chance at a fresh start, this time with the quarterback-needy Buffalo Bills. A person familiar with negotiations said the free-agent sixth-year player agreed to a two-year contract potentially worth over $12 million with Buffalo on Saturday night. Kolb spent the last two seasons in Arizona, where injuries hampered his opportunity to prove himself as a starter. The Cardinals were left with little choice but to release Kolb on March 15 in a move that came before they were set to pay the player a $2 million roster bonus.

The Arizona Cardinals released Kevin Kolb, ending the quarterback's two injury-filled seasons with the team. The team's move Friday came just ahead of the deadline for paying Kolb a $2 million roster bonus. The team paid Kolb some $20 million over two seasons after acquiring him in a trade that sent a second-round draft pick and cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie to the Eagles. The move reportedly saved $7 million in salary cap space. Later in the day, the Cardinals announced the signing of ex-Oakland defensive end Matt Shaughnessy to a 1-year deal.

Elvis Dumervil found himself out of a job and the Broncos were without their best defensive end Friday afternoon after they reached an agreement on a new contract but saw it all come undone when tardy faxing of the paperwork forced Denver to release him. Dumervil is now a free agent, and the Broncos now can start looking at other DEs, including Dwight Freeney, in what is shaping up as a buyer's market for pass rushers.   Kolb discarded The Arizona Cardinals have released ex-Eagle Kevin Kolb, ending the quarterback's two injury-filled seasons with the team.

The answer to the New York Jets' quarterback woes could be . . . ex-Eagle Kevin Kolb? Or could it be Geno Smith - if he slips past the Eagles, who have the fourth pick in the coming NFL draft? The speculation about Kolb has heated up for several reasons, according to several sources. The Arizona Cardinals owe Kolb a $2 million payment if he's still on their roster Saturday ("which is some pretty sweet St. Patty's Day drinking money," quips thescore.com) so he's expected to be cut. Also, his base salary is $9 million, with a cap number of $13.5 million, and Arizona just signed according to profootballtalk.com.

(RELATED CHART: Breaking down Nick Foles ) THERE'S NO way to know for sure what the Eagles have in Nick Foles. He's played 23 quarters and has started five games since replacing Mike Vick as the Eagles' quarterback. He's thrown 217 passes, some very good, some OK, some not so good. You can look at him right now and pretty much see whatever you want to see. If you want to believe he can be the Eagles' starting quarterback for the next decade, you can see that in him. If you want to believe he's the second coming of Kevin Kolb, you can see that, too. "If you're the Eagles, you're probably cautiously optimistic right now that this can be your guy," said NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock.

I AM HERE to state unequivocally that Nick Foles' rookie performance so far is nothing like those of Bobby Hoying, A.J. Feeley or Kevin Kolb. That's not just because in their Eagles careers, neither Hoying, Feeley nor Kolb ever threw for 381 yards, two late-fourth-quarter touchdowns, and no interceptions, the way Foles did Sunday at Tampa. It's because not one of those three did much of anything as an Eagles rookie. That's a huge point that often gets overlooked in the rush to compare the third-round kid from Arizona to other young quarterbacks who have excited fans in brief interludes as the Birds' starter.

Remember the good old days, when the Eagles had three starting-caliber quarterbacks - "a beautiful situation," Andy Reid once called it - on their roster? The fact that none of them - Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick, Kevin Kolb - won a Super Bowl is beside the point. In three short years, the Eagles have gone from quarterback-rich to as poor as the majority of teams in the NFL. They still have options on their roster with Vick and Nick Foles, but neither appears very attractive at the moment.

FOR ME, ANDY REID became a different guy on Sept. 21, 2010. That was when he made the first of several panic moves, none of which has worked out, panic moves that have transformed a stable, winning franchise into a smoldering ruin in the space of a little more than 2 years. Sept. 21, 2010, was the day Reid announced he was switching quarterbacks, from Kevin Kolb to Michael Vick, because Vick had played six good quarters while Kolb was sidelined by a concussion. You certainly could defend the decision - it looked like a stroke of genius for about 3 months - but there was no getting around the fact that, as I wrote in the Daily News the next day, it might have been "the most unReidlike turnaround of the Reid era. " This was a man who stuck with Todd Pinkston and James Thrash through three NFC Championship Game losses, whose hallmark was careful, deliberate decision-making.

On Sunday against the Cowboys, Nick Foles made his NFL debut by replacing injured starting quarterback Michael Vick with 7 minutes, 41 seconds left in the second quarter. On Nov. 23, 2008, against the Ravens, Kevin Kolb got his first significant NFL playing time by replacing struggling starting quarterback Donovan McNabb to open the third quarter. Their results were similarly unsuccessful. Outcomes: Sunday, Cowboys 38, Eagles 23; Nov. 23, 2008, Ravens 36, Eagles 7. Foles' numbers: 22-32-219, 1 TD, 1 INT. Kolb's numbers: 10-23-73, 0 TD, 2 INT. Foles' bright spot: He completed a 44-yard TD pass to Jeremy Maclin early in the third quarter to give the Eagles a 14-10 lead.