So what the heck happened to John Fox anyway?(An honest question)

[PantherFanForLife]

that was pretty much his downfall.

Well what do you think? Do you really think JR is right on this? I mean can we really ever get to a Superbowl WITHOUT free agency?

What are the chances we find the talent, grow the talent, and keep the talent at ALL positions long enough for us to become a Superbowl caliber team without free agency?

Just imagine we do that...and your QB or star RB gets hurt? Then what? Don't you still have to go to FA, plug the whole and make a run for it? Or are you going to keep the entire team on hold until you can draft the next guy and coach him into the position?

I don't like the second option at all!

[rayzor]

Stubbornness, inability to adapt, failure to maintain professional distance with players, overvaluing his own worth...

Those are the killers that I see.

i would add to this peaking too early. this gave him too much confidence in his own scheme and fed these others that are listed.

also peaking too early helped make him complacent, hence the "it is what it is" responses and the goal to only win 3 out of 4 games. bar was set low. just wanted to be "good enough" instead of the best and that transferred to his players, imo.

the last couple years, after richardson gave him the ultimatum about what would happen if he didn't have back to back winning seasons may have had him coaching scared. word was that he was paranoid of making any mistakes so he coached to try and prevent making them. that also transferred to players. it's not a bad idea to keep from making mistakes, but when it becomes your sole focus to the point of obsession, it keeps you from taking risks. you can't win if you don't take risks and don't trust your players to take them.

[PantherFanForLife]

the 2003-2007 Jake was the perfect compliment to Fox. I think losing that guy had a big impact on Fox.

I have always disagreed w/ Jake as a "game manager". I never thought he was. He was a a controlled gambler imo. Fox needs that based on his habits.

He was that too, but ONLY in the 4th quarter when we were down and the playoffs, which usually paid off for him with the one exception being his last playoff game. But during the length of the regular season, he was a game manager, just happy handing over the ball, and letting our run game do its thing.

Make no mistake. Jake's bread and butter was game management. Which is why when he did gamble it usually paid off. He had enough time during the game to get comfortable, and then stepped up when needed. And when he did that it was always unexpected by the defense because it was so "unlike" us to have Jake throwing those long bombs.

Most of the time it was always a bomb seemingly out of nowhere to Smith or Moose that made the difference in a game. But that play was always set up by us running the ball and making safe passes most of the time so when Jake did a play action....it almost ALWAYS worked. He sold it every time because of how consistent we were running the ball up to that point.

PS: And for the record neither Moore nor Clausen knew how to sell that freaking play action. That's something our QB coach really needs to work on.

[PantherFanForLife]

No real idea. I just know my own faith in him waned when he kept saying that Jake gave us the best chance to win.

Yes but looking at last year.....he WAS right. I'm sure he just referred to the other QBs on our roster.

[Mr. Scot]

Fox wouldn't be the first coach to come in like a hellfire and brimstone preacher, only to then let himself become friends with the guys he was supposed to be managing and thus allow his judgment to become muddled.

[bigdog10]

Fox needed veterans on his team to succeed and Jerry wanted to rebuild through youth. Fox was always the best at getting extra out of veterans, but very little out of younger players (there are a few exceptions both ways).

In other words: Management and Coaching Staff wanted to go in two different directions, and almost always, management wins that battle

[Peppers90 NC]

can we go ahead and agree to ban the first person who tries to use "it is what it is" as a joke?

[Snake]

Stubbornness, inability to adapt, too much reliance on veterans, failure to maintain professional distance with some players, overvaluing his own worth...

Those are the killers that I see.

I agree with this. The fact was Fox had a great plan in 2002 and it worked. The only problem was the game changed and so did the rules. His plan did not and the team suffered.

[Peppers90 NC]

Stubbornness, inability to adapt, too much reliance on veterans, failure to maintain professional distance with some players, overvaluing his own worth...

Those are the killers that I see.

My feeling is that he didnt do a good enough job surrounding himself with sound offensive-minded coaches. We have never developed a QB(although didnt necessarily need to with Jake here until it was too late), nor had we adapted to a more contemporary style. You could say we ran the same offense in 2002 with Rodney Peete and Lamarr Smith as we did these last two years with significantly more talent.

Defensively, the first two years we seemed more aggressive and became more passive as time went on. This just makes me think he lost his hunger which equals 8-8 records.

[Jangler]

And Bronco fans are reading this and going pshaw, just a bunch of disgruntled Panther fans.

[tondi]

I think he caught a bit of lightning in a bottle with Jake and Steve Smith. This was a guy nobody ever heard of that was brought in to be our backup and a 3rd round pick that nobody thought would amount to anything. Turns out those guys were able to give us 5-6 years of perhaps the most feared QB/WR duo in the league. The last couple of years are what the entirety of Foxs time here would have been like if he hadn't gotten lucky with Jake and Smith since he has proven completely incapable of drafting or developing anything with regards to QB's or WR's since. Unless a great QB or WR fall in his lap he is a 3 yards and a cloud of dust coach and always will be.

[Dpantherman]

His contract ran out

[Mr. Scot]

My feeling is that he didnt do a good enough job surrounding himself with sound offensive-minded coaches. We have never developed a QB(although didnt necessarily need to with Jake here until it was too late), nor had we adapted to a more contemporary style. You could say we ran the same offense in 2002 with Rodney Peete and Lamarr Smith as we did these last two years with significantly more talent.

Defensively, the first two years we seemed more aggressive and became more passive as time went on. This just makes me think he lost his hunger which equals 8-8 records.

I think if you look at the coaches and players he brought in, you could make an argument that Fox believed more in athleticism than he did in versatility and intelligence (no knock on the guys here, just a matter of approach).

[CatMan72]

At the end of the day, I think Fox was a bit of a George Allen type (although not quite to that extreme) in that he had no interest in developing young players.

Fox believe in a conservative game approach and that included reliable vets over unreliable young players. A guy like Diggs might have not made the same big plays a kid like Anderson could, but he also wasn't going to make the big mistakes and Fox preferred the safer approach of playing a guy like Diggs.

A team that wants to build through the draft can't operate like this.