The Bears' new head coach, same as the old head coach.
Chicago's extensive search ended quick this week when it rushed to hire John Fox soon after he mutually parted ways with Denver. On paper, the Bears went the recycled route to replace Marc Trestman, but in reality they just took two years to replace Lovie Smith with somebody just like him.
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Fox was let go by the Broncos because he couldn't meet high expectations when given a major quarterback upgrade. The Bears moved on from Smith because of, well, the exact same thing.
Smith went a solid 81-63 (.563) through nine years in Chicago, with three playoff trips, three playoff wins and a conference championship. Fox is 119-89 (.573) over 13 years in both Carolina and Denver, with seven playoff trips, eight playoff wins and two conference championships.
But before getting Peyton Manning the last three years, Fox was a more Smith-like 4-of-10 in getting his teams to the postseason. There's not much difference in their resumes otherwise, if you consider Smith's 2-14 record this year with the Buccaneers as his outlier. Fox had one of those, too, in 2010, his last year with the Panthers.
Fox is defensive-minded, falling from the tree of one legend, Chuck Noll. Smith's defensive acumen came from working under another, Tony Dungy, who played for Noll.
Beyond all numerical and philosophical comparisons, Fox comes with the same feel of Smith. It sounds good, but it has the backdrop of inconsistency and big-picture disappointment — that they still won't get to the point to be quite good enough to trump Mike McCarthy and the Packers.
Fox's hiring came with a new general manager, Ryan Pace. But it was an admission that they made a mistake with the old regime, which catered too much to quarterback Jay Cutler when it brought in Trestman. While they went to great lengths to fix their mercurial passer and offense as a whole, the Bears failed more with the bigger issue of needing to rebuild the defense.
They didn't stop the run in 2013 and struggled more against the pass in 2014. In contrast, in hindsight, Smith's signature Tampa 2, takeaway-oriented defense looked pretty good.
So here comes Fox ... not Mike Shanahan or Adam Gase or someone else charged with getting the offense, whether it's still quarterbacked by Cutler or someone else, back on track.
Fox, with the right coordinator and personnel (which he tends to get), can fix the defense and get them past dysfunction into functional.
But wait, wasn't that what Smith was able to do in Chicago, with more than moderate success? Yes it is.
In that sense, Fox is a good hire for the Bears, but that also reminds us that Smith was a bad fire.
