Probably one of the few people outside of Green Bay, Minnesota, and Detroit who weren’t happy to see the Chicago Bears in the playoffs last year was John Fox. The former head coach had toiled through three years trying to rebuild the team almost from scratch. Then he gets fired and the next year his replacement takes them to the postseason. That had to have stung pretty bad for the old coach.
While not everything that went wrong was his fault, there was no question that he didn’t do enough to save himself in Chicago. One of his worst decisions was replacing Adam Gase with Dowell Loggains as offensive coordinator in 2016. A move that caused the team to almost revert to the Dark Ages of football philosophy, running on 1st and 2nd down and then only throwing when they had to.
Never mind the fact that his loyalty to the strength and conditioning staff continued to result in frequent injury problems with the team. That and his standoffish attitude towards the media and the fans. A year has passed now and Fox is entrenched as an expert at ESPN. That certainly didn’t stop him from taking a shot at their recent efforts during the 2019 offseason.
Framing a grade around kicker question shows weak John Fox argument
While the loss of Vic Fangio is tough, it’s not like that was a decision the Bears had any control over. He was offered a head coaching job. He took it. That’s not their fault. All things considered, they did pretty well in replacing him with Chuck Pagano, a respected defensive coach with a strong background. To say nothing that the assessment ignores the array of talented players the Bears have on defense.
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Fox’s argument though was even worse. He basically gave them the worst grade because they didn’t “solve” the kicker position. Well, how were they supposed to do that definitively in the offseason? There was no home run name on the open market. Stephen Gostkowski was the closest thing to it and he returned to New England.
Basically, it feels like because the Bears didn’t spend big in free agency or have either a 1st or 2nd round pick, they were an easy team to pick on for this segment. Fox took the easy way out while also getting a little dig into his former team at the same time.
