Former Chicago Bears head coach John Fox no doubt feels some regret. His run with the team counts as his first-ever true failure as the job in his long NFL career. He took Carolina and Denver to Super Bowls. He couldn’t even manage a winning season in Chicago. For someone so competitive like him, that has to sting beyond measure.
Fox finished 14-34 in his Bears run. That amounts to the second-worst winning percentage in franchise history. It’s hard to say where things went wrong. The team was in a clear rebuild when he took over, something he had never experienced before. The Panthers and Broncos each already had strong, young cores in place when he took over those franchises. Such wasn’t the case in Chicago.
Then there were the injury problems. No team in the NFL could match the Bears for the number of players landing on injured reserve, especially over the past two years. It’s hard to win games when so many starters aren’t on the field. In the end, though, Fox’s outdated coaching style put the final nail in his coffin. His inability to coach up the quarterback position was a major factor in his dismissal.
Now he’s forced to endure one of the harshest realities of a fired coach: watching somebody else reap the rewards of his hard work.
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John Fox can’t hide his regret while saying Bears are almost ready to win
NBC Sports Chicago caught up with the 62-year old this off-season. Fox has no plans to retire yet and is likely awaiting his next opportunity. He took the chance to talk about his time with the Bears. It seemed hard for him to not seem a little sour about not being able to finish the job.
“It would’ve been nice to see it through. That’s kind of a bitter pill but you sort things out and move forward.
“I do think it’s closer than people think. We inherited a mess… but I felt we were on the brink at the end. I think that [Halas Hall] building is definitely different; they feel it. I do think that it was a positive.”
He’s not wrong. It did feel like the Bears were starting to trend upwards at the end of the 2017 season. They blew out the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns in December. Mitch Trubisky was playing some good football and the defense, despite injuries, allowed 15 points or less in three of the last five games.
One more good off-season from GM Ryan Pace could set them up to make a playoff push in 2018. Undoubtedly Fox recognized that. To think that Matt Nagy might swoop in and enjoy the spoils of that tireless work? It has to sting a little.
