Bears Blitz

Published by Ty Schalter on January 16, 2015
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

John Fox has everything the Chicago Bears and their fans desperately want right now: a lantern jaw, a silver mane, a solid defensive pedigree and a long track record of…well, getting to Super Bowls.

When Michael C. Wright of ESPN.com reported that the Bears hired Fox, it made all the sense in the world. But is it the right hire? The best hire? The one to get the Bears back to the top of the NFL?

Fox will replace the gaunt, professorial Marc Trestman on the Chicago sideline. Bears fans will surely love that.

Even if Trestman‘s offensive wonkery had turned quarterback Jay Cutler into Dan Marino and the Bears into Super Bowl champions, he still represented a big departure from the kind of football—and coach—sausage-devouring Chicagoans know and love.

The Bears are synonymous with the hard-nosed defenses of Mike Ditka and Lovie Smith. The 2014 unit allowed a 31st-ranked 442 points. It was an embarrassment to the legendary legacies of Dick Butkus, Mike Singletary and Brian Urlacher.

Fox, though, won’t have a Hall of Fame middle linebacker to work with, or top-shelf talent like Von Miller, Chris Harris Jr. and T.J. Ward.

Instead, aging stars like linebacker Lance Briggs and former Vikings All-Pro defensive end Jared Allen are still around, and cornerback Kyle Fuller certainly looks like a difference-making youngster.

In the middle are a lot of decent players who won’t get much better. The Bears’ breakout veteran of 2014 was defensive end Willie Young, who’ll play most of next season from the wrong side of age 30.

Let’s say Fox, and whomever he hires to round out his coaching staff, can get more production out of the Bears’ defensive talent than outgoing defensive coordinator Mel Tucker did. Given Fox’s track record of quick turnarounds, that’s a safe proposition.

“Safe” is how the Chicago Tribune‘s Brad Biggs described Fox’s hire on Twitter. Biggs declared Fox (subscription required) “the right man” for the Bears’ “rebuilding job,” and it would certainly seem true for the defense.

What’ll happen on the other side of the ball? After all, that’s what this is all about.

Smith could have kept plugging guys into his slowly evolving system and turning out top-five scoring defenses, as he did in four of his nine seasons in Chicago, including two of the last three.

However, that wasn’t good enough to get the Bears over the hump in the wide-open NFC North. The 5-11 Bears finished in the division cellar this year, looking up at three teams who are younger, more talented, more productive or some combination thereof.

Trestman‘s hire was a moonshot, a high-risk experiment trying to convert Cutler’s tremendous physical talent into skilled, consistent quarterback play. Erstwhile general manager Phil Emery rolled the dice on Trestman and lost his job.

Ryan Pace, who is now the youngest general manager in the NFL at 37 years old, is undoing what was done with the Fox hire: Restoring stability and hard-nosed Bears football.

However, he’s also putting a lot of pressure on himself.

Fox isn’t an X’s and O’s wizard like the Philadelphia Eagles‘ Chip Kelly. Fox isn’t going to revolutionize football with his schemes, sports science or preparation. That means Pace has to be that much better when it comes to talent acquisition and evaluation.

Coaching up the defense from awful to decent without much in the way of free agents or draft picks to spend is a tall task, but it’s within Fox’s ability. That will get the Bears a few more wins. 

But nearly all the Bears’ difference-making veterans—Cutler, tailback Matt Forte, receivers Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery, tight end Martellus Bennett, guard Kyle Long—are on the offensive side of the ball.

Pace not only has to restock the age-depleted defense with talent, but he also has to keep Cutler surrounded with protection and weapons, too. Only Cutler taking a big step forward in commitment and execution can bail Pace out.

CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora speculated on Twitter that former Browns offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan might be Fox’s first choice as offensive architect:

Shanahan, who’d seemed to have lost his patience with quarterback Johnny Manziel, would likely get much more production out of Cutler. Despite the obvious flaws of former Shanahan charges Manziel, Brian Hoyer, Robert Griffin III and Matt Schaub, the offensive coordinator could be nearing a crossroads. If Shanahan doesn’t do better with Cutler, many will wonder if Shanahan is the problem.

No matter who draws up the Bears offense, if he can’t unlock the scoring potential of that incredible talent, the Bears will be stuck around .500.

They won’t be better than the always-dangerous Lions and certainly won’t challenge the Packers for NFC North supremacy.

Even the Minnesota Vikings, who appear to have a keeper in quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, will be a much tougher out after the potential return of star tailback Adrian Peterson.

That’s exactly the no-man’s land the Bears occupied for years under Smith: good, but never great—and often not good enough.

No matter how strong Fox’s jaw, no matter how accountable he holds his players, there’s only so much a head coach can do if he doesn’t have a championship-caliber roster. The Bears might be on the fast track back to respectability, but they’re no closer to a championship than they were before firing Smith.

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