#3. The direction John Fox is taking.
Pace: “None of us are happy with our record and this season has been disappointing for all of us. Like John said we do see progress and as we’ve talked about we’ve played a lot of younger players and with a lot of them we like what we see. I think right now we have the most starts by rookies and second-year players in the league and there’s an advantage to that. We know we need to play with better consistency and I think that will come as these guys gain experience and we need to add more firepower to this roster. One thing I really want to stress is that in order to develop these younger players you really need a coaching staff that’s on board with preparing them and playing them and I think John’s done a good job in leading our team and his staff in assisting that development. I also think he’s done a good job instilling the right culture that we want in the locker room and those aren’t small things. To change a culture, that’s extremely difficult. But I think if you get it right with the foundation of your roster you can really build on top of that.”
Possible Meaning: There’s a lot to that, but something that stands out immediately is when he says Fox has instilled a the right culture and has assisted with developing young players. NFL insiders are reporting that Fox will be retained for next season despite going 9-23 in his first two years. Local beat reporters have talked about possible tension between the two due to Pace’s lack of overall control, that doesn’t seem to be the case. By the sound of this answer, Pace says he’s picking the players and Fox is putting them on the field. The chemistry between them would appear to have an arrow pointing up, rather than down.
