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Be careful what you wish for....


Matt Foley

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The Jacksonville Jaguars got really close with former coach Tom Coughlin. The fan base (and ownership) reached a point of impatience with Coughlin, ran him out of town, and they haven't come close to an AFC Championship game since.

The St. Louis Rams became a juggernaut at the turn of the century with offensive coordinator/then head coach Mike Martz. Martz won and won big in St. Louis. But his faults were glaring, and Rams fans figured an up and coming coach could do better than Martz. The Rams haven't won squat since.

The San Francisco 49ers won two Super Bowls under George Seifert, whose won/loss record in the Bay Area would be the envy of any coach then or now. He wasn't a program starter, as Panthers fans know too well, but he was a master at keeping a veteran team in the championship mix. SF ran him out of town and after several trips to the NFC Championship under Seifert they haven't been back (or even close, really) since.

The only team that you could say ran off a guy who, like Fox, gave an organization its first taste of continued success and benefitted from it was Tampa Bay. And yet, after that Super Bowl, the Bucs never did crap, either.

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Jax....horrible ownership and infrastructure. Same with the 49ers. Your Rams just hit the injury bug on offense and the defense got old at the same time. The Panthers have one of the youngest teams in the NFL with talent in their prime at most of the key positions. An owner who cares and facilities that are still in the top half of the league.

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Fox did a great job in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2008.

He did a poor job in 2006, 2007 and 2009.

It should be noted that the years in which he did a poor job, the team never lost 10 games (at least not to this point). No other coach can say that.

then his success is mostly front loaded.

if the season goes the way I'm sure it will, we'll have a coach that hasn't won a playoff game in 4 seasons and hasn't even made the playoffs in 3 out of the last 4 seasons.

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We will have a easy schedule next year. And that's the way Fox likes it, easy years make him look like a good winning coach.

Yep. This is always the case. We do good after we do bad and get an easy schedule.

However, I don't think Fox should be fired, and I think Fox as a coach is great. He just needs to learn to not get so close to a player that while the game is suffering he has problems pulling him out. Second, he needs to give guys a chance to make plays BEFORE he dismisses them, so we can at least weed out who wants to play.

Other than that he is an excellent coach and has done a lot especially considering the length of time, more than people seem to give him credit for with a Carolina team.

Of course deciding who plays is part of being a coach, and I do think if Fox can't let go of Delhomme, and start working with another QB with more of a future he should go along with him.

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