Former Chicago Bears head coach John Fox wasn’t the most popular figure in team history. While he deserves credit for stabilizing the locker room and improving their team culture, the man also left behind a legacy of animosity with the media and disappointment with the fans.
Not only did he fail to record a winning season in three years with the Bears. A lot of the reasons for their struggles could be traced back to him from the constant injury issues to the lack of imagination on offense.
Yet no position was thrown into greater turmoil during his stint than the kicker. After his first season in 2015, Robbie Gould had a somewhat down year by his standards. Though he still hit over 84% of his field goal, he did miss a number of tough kicks in close games.
This convinced Fox and his staff that the then 33-year old was starting to lose his swing. So they made the decision to part ways, replacing him with veteran free agent Conor Barth. That, of course, became an even greater disaster.
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Fast forward to last week, with the Bears trying to recover from the now infamous Cody Parkey double doink, Fox had the audacity to state Chicago had the worst offseason of any team in the league. The primary reason? Their inability to fix the kicker position. Former Bears guard Tom Thayer, now a co-anchor for games with Jeff Joniak, was on 670 The Score and didn’t waste time lambasting Fox for those comments.
“John, you’re the one that got rid of Robbie Gould. You’re sitting here harping about the kicking situation being in flux because you got rid of him. I know he missed a couple kicks at the time, but he was one of the better kickers in one of the most difficult stadiums to kick in, and then he’s proved that point going out to San Francisco.”
John Fox is the ultimate hypocrite for those comments
Thayer wasn’t done though. He then called out the coach for his incredible hypocrisy by using ESPN, a primary media hub, to call out the Bears when he did everything he could to stonewall the media when he was the head coach.
“John took his voice to ESPN and starts contributing to something after not contributing anything to the media people during his time here.”
Nothing about his statements are wrong. At all. Fox was notorious for doing everything in his power to keep information away from the media, even when there was no point to it. The tactics felt less like a method to maintain some sort of edge and more like a man’s clear disdain for cameras.
Inevitably this led to nobody backing him up in the public eye when his job came under fire after the 2017 season. Now he’s unemployed and embracing the same profession he tried so hard to belittle for so long. Bad for, Mr. Fox. Bad form.
