John Fox figured he was done with coaching when he was fired by the Chicago Bears the day after the 2017 season ended.
Fox was drained from a lifetime in the sport, including nearly two straight decades as a head coach with the Carolina Panthers, Denver Broncos and Bears.
He found work as a studio analyst at ESPN and retired to Florida with his family during the COVID-19 pandemic. But as life got back to normal and football moved on without him, Fox discovered there was something he was missing.
“I think whenever even ex-players, a lot of players that I’ve coached, when they get out of the game, you miss the camaraderie, you miss the day-to-day, you miss the closeness of the people cause you work very, very close, whether you’re playing or coaching,” Fox said. “So I missed that. Naturally, you’d miss that. It’s like an old boys club.
“But digging into it, what I missed I felt more than just the camaraderie was the, ‘How can we stop this? How can we mess them up in this area?’ It’s the chess match part of it. I didn’t realize I’d miss it that much, and really enjoyed that a year ago and looking forward to doing that all over again here.”
Fox returned to the NFL after a four-year hiatus last season as a senior defensive consultant with the Indianapolis Colts and was hired for a similar position with the Detroit Lions this winter.
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In announcing the move at the NFL combine in March, Lions coach Dan Campbell, who played for the New York Giants when Fox was an assistant there in 1999-2001, said Fox would play a “pivotal” behind-the-scenes role assisting Aaron Glenn on defense, similar to what Dom Capers did on Campbell’s first Lions staff in 2021.
Capers served as a senior defensive assistant and sounding board for Glenn before leaving for the Broncos last spring. The Lions did not have a senior defensive assistant last season, but employeed John Morton as a senior offensive assistant.
“A very successful head coach,” Campbell said of Fox in March. “Three different teams in this league and, man, he’s been out of it for about five years. He went back to Indy last year kind of in the same capacity, senior defensive assistant and, man, you could see the fire in him. I mean, it was, it’s impressive, man. He just, he misses the chess match, he misses preparing for an opponent and just worrying about defense. And so I think he’s going to be great at helping A.G. just watch his blind spots.”
One of seven coaches to reach the Super Bowl with multiple teams and one of four to win conference titles in both the AFC and NFC, Fox’s exact duties will be fleshed out as the season progresses but he described his role Wednesday as being “another set of eyes” for the Lions’ young defensive staff.
Glenn is entering his third season as coordinator, and position coaches John Scott Jr. (defensive line), Kelvin Sheppard (linebackers) and Brian Duker (defensive backs) have two seasons or less of experience apiece as primary position coaches in the NFL.
“It’s not anything (like) I’ve got the master key to anything,” he said. “It’s just another set of eyes, another thing to look at, maybe another set of experiences to draw from. Just here to help anyway you can. It’s exciting. You’ve got a good bunch of guys and guys that are willing to listen. And if they don’t want to listen, that’s fine, too. It’s just another set of eyes and ears and experiences.”
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The Lions finished last in the NFL in total defense and near the bottom of the league in points allowed last season, but Fox said he sees promise in a still-young group that projects to have at least four new starters this fall.
The Lions return their entire front seven from last year’s 9-8 team, but signed three new starters for their secondary in free agency — Cam Sutton, Emmanuel Moseley and C.J. Gardner-Johnson — and expect to get safety Tracy Walker back from a torn Achilles.
The five rookies who played key roles on defense last season — Aidan Hutchinson, James Houston, Kerby Joseph, Josh Paschal and Malcolm Rodriguez — should improve with experience, too.
“I think statistics are kind of odd because once you sink pretty far down it’s hard to recover,” Fox said. “And so I think the end-of-the-year stats weren’t that impressive, but the most important stat is the win-loss column and they finished strong and not just as a football team they did, but I think particularly on defense they got better as they went and now we get an opportunity to build on that.”
Though Fox has no previous working relationship with Glenn, he said he had “great respect” for Glenn as a player and was impressed with the Lions’ defense during joint practices last summer in Indianapolis.
As for reuniting with Campbell, Fox called it “a perfect situation.”
“The great thing about Dan is what you see is what you get,” Fox said. “And he was that way as a player, he showed up every day at work, had his lunch pail. He went after it as a player, just like he is now as a coach, which very proud of him, very proud to have the opportunity to be associated with him as a coach now. He and A.G. both, when I met with them, it was kind of a match made (in heaven). I thought it was a great situation and very, very proud to be here.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.