Chicago Bears: Ding, dong, John Fox is finally gone

The Chicago Bears have fired John Fox, arguably the worst coach in its franchise’s history.

Rejoice, ye Chicago Bears fans: John Fox has finally met the ax he has been grinding for himself.

Fox, the owner of losing-est record in Bears coaching history (14-34) and its second-worst win percentage (29.1%), has officially been fired after three seasons as head coach.

It’s over. It’s done.

No more questions about what hell he and this coaching staff will visit upon this team. In particular, Mitch Trubisky may now actually get a chance to develop into as a star.

Begone, thou ridiculous challenges, questionable time management, foolish roster decisions, mediocre-to-completely-disgusting preparation or the most incredibly uninformative, nauseatingly pointless press conferences in the history of the NFL (well, not from him, anyway).

The rebuilding Bears will get a new coach, one that may finally bring Ryan Pace’s vision to fruition.

Sure, the 2017 Chicago Bears weren’t going to be a great football team, Fox or no Fox. A young, middling-to-poor talent roster, comically awful injury issues (possibly his staff’s fault) and bad breaks contributed to these losses as well.

Also, I’ve already said that I don’t absolve Pace completely for this mess, including signing off on Fox. And in the end, the players make the plays, not their coach.

But, while they weren’t contending for the playoffs, this team wasn’t 5-11 bad. Not really. This roster, even with its injuries, had 7-9, possibly 8-8 potential. And much of the inability to achieve that potential lies squarely on Fox’s shoulders.

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What if the Bears had started Trubisky immediately instead of pretending that he could learn things behind Mike Glennon?

What if they’d played Tarik Cohen and Adam Shaheen, two difference-making offensive talents, as much as they should have? Why pretend they “didn’t know the playbook” well enough to play in crucial situations? Is finding ways to get your best players on the field that tall of a task?

And what if Fox and Dowell Loggains ran an NFL offense for more than about 6% of the season?

Well, we’ll never know. And thankfully, the Bears aren’t going to keep sitting around waiting to find out. Sorry, Brian Urlacher: I really didn’t need another year of this. None of us did.

Next: Chicago Bears must re-sign Kyle Fuller

This franchise has a ton of work to do for next season, including getting Trubisky some receivers and filling in the last holes on the defense.

But the Chicago Bears have arguably taken care of the most important step toward revamping their listless franchise: getting John Fox and his merry troupe of fools out of Halas Hall on the double.

Okay, on a non-snarky note though, good luck to Coach Fox in whatever he does next. I suppose we can at least wish him that.