Does Fox Have a Clue About His Staff Either?.........

And for good measure just so no one can say "well what do you expect from Steve Rosenbloom, Bernie Lincicome thinks Fox is full of shit too.


John Fox has a bag full of gibberish and uses it all
Bernie Lincicome Chicago Tribune

Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: John Fox is at the podium again.

"We will get better."

Fox said that of the Bears at the end of last season, when the benefit of the doubt was more generous than it will be at the end of this one.

Surely the same sentiment again will be offered, and it already has been, over and over, week after week, though it has seemed more like whistling past the bust of George Halas than real conviction.

While Fox's dismissive shrug-and-squirm approach to the press does not encourage assurance that he knows what he is doing, or even that he knows what he is talking about, Fox remains by title a football coach. So until that changes the Bears and anyone who cares about them are stuck.

The Bears did not get better; the Bears got worse. The Bears will continue to get worse. In fact, that seems to be the plan.

"Sometimes you have to take some steps back before you step forward."

That is another one of those Foxisms that is neither original nor relevant because if the Bears take any more steps back, they will need a parachute and a priest.

Say this for the Bears: They do back up well.

The strategy of taking so many steps back ignores the fact the Bears will need a running start just to get to where they were when they were not good enough.

The Bears have plummeted from mediocre to godawful under Fox and his companion shadow, Ryan Pace, the apprentice general manager.

What part Pace has in the general misery of things must be taken on faith, and why not? After all, faith is the general appeal from Halas Hall. Some samples:

"We see improvement." (What the rest of us see is a scoreboard that tells the truth.)

"Those people who study the game can look at it statistically and see quite a lot of growth." (People who study the cactus can see growth too. For the rest of us, let us know when it casts some shade.)

Pace is not obliged to explain himself as Fox must do after games and during the week, a duty that resembles a patient getting the same tooth filled over and over.

"Our team responded, that's the good news."

"Our guys fought back."

"Obviously effort is not an area we are deficient in."

Pick a game, pick a week — finding optimism in two seasons of debris is like the classic kid searching through the manure for a pony.

Fox has a bag full of gibberish and uses it all.

"I think we are, in my opinion, in a way better position to be in striking distance moving forward."

Huh?

It may yet turn out that Fox is the best coach the Bears ever have had, though, to use Fox's own words again: "We're evaluating."

Fox is not likely to stick around long enough to be the worst coach the Bears have had. But he came to the Bears because he was no longer wanted in Denver, which got Fox when Carolina didn't want him any more. And he will leave from here as unwanted as usual.

The promise for the Bears to get better after a 6-10 season was not broken as much as it was bent, this way and that, like balloon animals that are useless except to amuse.

"I can't predict the future, otherwise I'd be in a different line of work."

And very likely no better at it.

So rest in pieces 2016 Chicago Bears.

Don't bother to write or tweet or stay in touch at all. Best to forget and not forgive. It has been painful for everyone, with injuries to bodies, souls and secondary markets.

In the same year that the Cubs beat Cleveland, the Bears became Cleveland. Not a memory to keep nor a future to contemplate.

Wait till next year, if you dare.

Bernie Lincicome is a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune.