Tall Midget wrote:
NME wrote:
Tall Midget wrote:
Why do you believe Fox is anything other than a slightly better version of Lovie Smith (if that)? Prior to this season, Smith's career winning pct. was .565; Fox's career winning pct. is 570. It could be reasonably argued that Smith has coached less talented teams than Fox has.
How so? Defensively both had talent, so that washes out. Outside of Steve Smith, what elite talent did the Panthers ever have on offense?
Fox won't struggle to find coordinators and isn't afraid to hire ones that could bolt for HC jobs. Fox has also been more adaptable over the years to fit the talent on the teams he coaches where as Lovie, as we should all know, is really only good at doing one thing. And while Fox didn't get the SB win with Manning, he at least got there and was in the playoffs pretty much every year he was in Denver, including a year he didn't have Manning.
Fox coached one of the most talented offensive teams in the NFL for the past four years. He also had some pretty good talent on offense in Carolina. Fox is Lovie 2.0.
I thought we were only including their comparative years of Carolina and Chicago.
If we're going to give him credit for coaching that talent in Denver then he also gets credit for going to the playoffs pretty much every year with a Super Bowl appearance.
In other words, his stay in Denver was a very successful one, there isn't much of anything negative to say about it even with the SB loss.
As for Steve Smith being a game changer, sure, but after him offensively the Panthers were not elite. On the flip side Lovie coached teams had talent too offensively in guys like Matt Forte (a game changer), Thomas Jones, Greg Olson, a HoF worthy kick returner in Hester (not offense technically, but still) as well as a game changing elite talent QB in Cutler that Lovie could never really find the right guy to coach up. I'll at least concede that including Cutler in this could go either way -but he does at least represent elite talent, realized or not.
Besides all that, outside of them both being based around defense as coaches I don't think their coaching style is all that similar.