Chicago Bears have fresh attitude with John Fox, Ryan Pace

There is a new attitude around the Chicago Bears under John Fox and Ryan Pace. Gone are players they feel do not fit with the new way of life around Halas Hall (at any cost), and in are players who are ready to bleed Navy and Orange.

What a difference a couple of years make.

To put things bluntly, the Chicago Bears under general manager Phil Emery and head coach Marc Trestman were a joke. The offense started out well, but then collapsed. The defense never got started, and actually regressed to the point that it was unrecognizable. They gave up points like they were helping other teams score.

It seemed like Emery and Trestman were trying to revolutionize the game of football. They may have felt that they were the smartest people in the league, and they were going to change the way teams would win in the NFL.

It did not work as planned.

Chicago Bears’ ownership had enough of it, and cleared house. Out went Emery, Trestman and most of the coaches.

In came Ryan Pace and John Fox, and things are changing.

Pace and Fox have an idea of what type of player someone wearing a Chicago Bears uniform should be. They cleaned house, and installed a new type of attitude and thinking around Halas Hall.

One of the first things Fox did was to re-install the assignment of captains. Some (like Trestman) would say that there really is not a need for captains, that these players should operate without a hierarchy.

Well, players need to have that. Under Trestman’s no captains rule, things spiraled. Instead of having players that the team recognized as leaders and looked up to, some tried to take the mantle themselves, but were rejected outright. That led to locker room blowups, and players turning their attention to the team off.

There should be some players that are considered leaders that the other players can go to and get advice or other type of help. There are things that players just refuse to go to the coaching staff to talk about.

Next, Pace and Fox wanted to have players who bled Navy and Orange and nothing else. Brandon Marshall had other interests that sometimes appeared to have more importance than the Chicago Bears.

Marshall was on record saying he would continue to use football as his platform, so the Chicago Bears shipped him out to the New York Jets.

Martellus Bennett was more interested in getting a new contract

than staying on the field and helping the Bears win games. That concern also made him a malcontent, picking fights with his teammates.

The Chicago Bears grew tired of Bennett’s antics, and they ended up trading him to the New England Patriots.

The two deals Pace made to ship out Marshall and Bennett were not very good ones (they gave up draft picks in addition to the players in both cases), but the feeling was that the team would be better by subtraction.

The new Chicago Bears regime also made a point of bringing in players who fit their new philosophy (the Ray McDonald fiasco notwithstanding).

Pernell McPhee and Tracy Porter not only played well after signing with the Chicago Bears last season, but also were great leaders in the clubhouse. McPhee became one of the most vocal leaders on the team, and Porter was instrumental in saving Kyle Fuller‘s season early on when Fuller struggled coming out of the gate.

This offseason, Pace signed linebacker Jerrell Freeman, formerly of the Indianapolis Colts. He is rated as one of the top inside

linebackers in the league. It was a comment he made, however, that demonstrated how great a signing it was.

Freeman’s teammate on the Colts, tight end Coby Fleener, said that some players on that team were just “along for the ride” last season when the Colts missed the playoffs. He insinuated that some players did not put in full efforts late in the season.

Freeman took those words personally, to say the least.

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"That s— pisses me off. And he must’ve been looking in the mirror when he did the interview. I despise guys like that. That’s what little girls do, talk about you when you’re not around. I’m a grown man. If I see something I don’t like, I’m going to go have a face-to-face [conversation] with that player/players and we are going to get an understanding! I feel like I had a hand in building what’s over there, so he’s s— on me, too. That’s a b— move."

That is the type of attitude a team and its fans dream of having in their players. As Freeman said, he helped build some of the success in Indianapolis, and if you blast one player, you blast them all. That is what has been missing around Halas Hall for quite some time. Now there is going to be an “us against the world” mentality that helps teams win.

Next: Chicago Bears Mock Draft 2.0: Four Round Picks

Ryan Pace and John Fox are assembling a Chicago Bears team with a new attitude. Hopefully this all translates to victories on the field.