Hiring John Fox was a big mistake. In hindsight people should’ve seen that from the beginning. The warning signs were there. Here’s a guy who was fired despite going 12-4 the previous season in 2014. That doesn’t happen unless the team is genuinely convinced he’s not good enough. The fact that Denver won the Super Bowl the year after he left? That’s not a coincidence.
In fact Broncos VP John Elway alluded to the exact reason why Fox was dismissed. Those same problems referenced then have since appeared in a big way for Chicago.
“I think if there is one thing that you would like to have and you want to feel, at least in the last game you want to feel like you go out kicking and screaming. When you’re right there, and I think two years in a row it didn’t feel like we went out kicking and screaming because of the fact the way we played the last game.”
Elway added that he was “disappointed we didn’t have more fire” against the Colts.”
Sound familiar? After a close loss to Atlanta in week one, people expected the Bears to come out angry and pissed off the next week in Tampa Bay. Instead they were sluggish, sloppy and dumb from beginning to end. The Buccaneers crushed them 29-7. All the hallmarks of what Elway referenced were on display.
So how in the hell did the Bears get suckered into hiring him?
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Hiring John Fox came about through two courses of events
Since 2000, a total of 11 of the 17 Super Bowls played were won by coaches running their second or third teams. Of course that number is somewhat skewed by Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin who claimed seven of those victories. Still, the league has had a run of the successful second chance coaches in the past couple decades.
That’s made even more remarkable by the fact that from 1966 to 1999, second chance coaches only won six Super Bowls. The rest went to coaches with their first teams. So in many ways the Bears were lured into the “experienced” coach end of the pool for two reasons. The first was a league trend of success in that direction and the other was having a young rookie GM.
“The move comes as little surprise after Rapoport was told that Chicago wanted to pair first-year general manager Ryan Pace with a veteran head coach. Fox undoubtedly received a strong review from friend and Saints coach Sean Payton, who worked for years with Pace in New Orleans.”
Experience means less than whether he’s right for the team
After the Marc Trestman debacle, the Bears clearly wanted a head coach with deep NFL roots. Trestman had not been in the league since 2008 and clearly was behind the times. Fox becoming available looked like a filet mignon after two years of burnt rump roast. Unfortunately the Bears didn’t have the cool heads needed to at least think about it for a couple days.
They basically got on the phone as fast as possible and handed him the job. Now here they are paying for it. Fox actually has a worse winning percentage right now than Trestman did. Drink that in for a second. The Bears aren’t going anywhere with this guy. He may have been good at one time. He’s not anymore.
A change is needed. If Pace makes that call, and there’s reason to think he will, then he has to make sure it’s the right one this time.