Eventually, Bryan Cox will cost Dave Wannstedt his job. Normally, players are supposed to save the coach’s job. Usually, it’s the coach stabbing his finger in the player’s face, not the other way around.
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As quickly as the Bears acquitted themselves as a feisty opponent against a superior team in Green Bay Monday night, Cox indicted them on national television as classless losers.
In the locker room of the world champions, the Packers were left chuckling at the odd Cox and friends as much as admiring a Bear effort that held promise against all odds.
Because Cox has not yet helped the Bears become winners in his short Chicago stay, the least he could do is help them from becoming coast-to-coast buffoons. Despite countless promises, both tasks seem beyond him.
Wannstedt fined and reprimanded Cox, who apologized, sort of. Never again will he throw a helmet or tantrum while helping officials do their job. Wannstedt also praised Cox for playing a great game, a detail lost in the silly finish.
“Bryan knows what he did was wrong,” team President Michael McCaskey said. “The club has taken steps to reinforce its long-held view that you play hard but you play within the rules.”
Cox is the antithesis of a leader, the first sign of which is an ability to control oneself. If the coach can’t control him either, who is left? Where were the teammates grabbing Cox and escorting him away from officials the way Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen routinely do with Dennis Rodman?
Wannstedt is now a game below .500 for his Chicago tenure, and the record will determine his fate. But to some people, how you play the game isn’t totally lost amid the winning and losing. Say what you will about McCaskey and his family, and most people do, they are not crude, classless people.
Mike Ditka lost games in his final season, but he also admits he lost control. After the coach lost a sense of decorum–snapping at players, berating reporters, yelling at fans and threatening callers in public–McCaskey needed no further grounds to fire him.
Cox’s tirade wasn’t his only questionable behavior Monday night. After he sacked Brett Favre, Cox’s path to the sideline included a gesture that looked suspiciously like a dog at a fire hydrant. Wannstedt and McCaskey say they didn’t see it. This is a form of “celebration” not yet specifically outlawed by the watchdog NFL, but it’s enough to tick off most sensible businessmen charging $50 a ticket and seeking new public stadiums as well.
When former Kansas City Chief Bennie Thompson lifted and shook his leg during a game once, his position coach told him in the locker room afterward that a repeat performance would earn him a one-way ticket to some other kennel. New Bears personnel chief Mark Hatley came from the Chiefs.
For an owner like McCaskey who abolished the Honey Bears, Cox is to decorum what acid rain is to paint.
The Bears now have lost seven straight games to the Packers, tying Green Bay’s record set in 1928-29-30. Another victory Oct. 12 in Soldier Field will tie the all-time series record for dominance set by the Bears of 1985-88. Cox has not become the Charles Martin or Kenny Stills counterpart to an era, but perceptions travel in cycles too.
Unlike Bear loathing for those cheap-shot artists, the Packers now treat Cox as an annoying pet. Both coach Mike Holmgren and quarterback Favre know Cox from Pro Bowls and had nothing bad to say about him Monday night. Once, when Cox was lying face down, Favre patted him on the rear like a master encouraging a sleeping dog to lie.
“He’s a good friend of mine and really a great guy and a heck of a football player,” Favre said. “Why he does some of those things, I don’t know. I’m not getting in the middle of it. We’ve got to play them again.”
Holmgren made a crack about telling Cox at halftime to “relax and let’s go have some orange juice. He doesn’t need to do all that stuff in my opinion.”
Said safety LeRoy Butler: “Our guys kept composure and let them lose theirs a little bit. With a team like that, if a guy hits you, you just have to take it and go on back to the huddle. It all wound up hurting them more than it will hurt us.”
As long as Cox and whatever Bears follow his lead act like petulant children, the Packers will look like men playing against boys.