Rozner: Maybe Bears should look to Hawks' McDonough

In late September, I began asking the question.

Pretty much every day on the Score with Dan Bernstein, I wondered when it would be fair to judge John Fox and his coaching staff.

How long should he be given, especially after Marc Trestman was essentially fired by the middle of his second season?

The answer from analysts around the NFL was always the same: too soon.

So how about now?

Fox would have to go 5-2 just to match Trestman's two-year mark with the Bears, and the end for Trestman came after an embarrassing loss to Green Bay off a bye week, to a 12-4 Packers team that was certainly a Super Bowl contender.

That loss dropped the Trestman Bears to 3-6 in Week 10.

Coming off a bye week Sunday, Fox and the Bears were thrashed by a 3-5 Tampa team, the visitors looking completely unprepared to play a football game.

That loss dropped the Fox Bears to 2-7 in Week 10.

As for GM Ryan Pace, he picked the head coach and he's had two drafts. The Bears have had injuries, for certain, but they lack depth and have yet to find a quarterback to develop.

With the Alshon Jeffery suspension heaped on top of everything else Monday, the Bears are officially a laughingstock.

Again.

And every few years, that brings us back to the McCaskeys, Ted Phillips and the front office that now owns the longest championship drought in Chicago sports.

Where do they go from here?

NFL.com's Ian Rapoport reported two weeks ago that, "The team's brass has begun a full examination of the football operation from top to bottom," and, "As chairman George McCaskey and the team's brass mull future moves, everyone has been put on notice."

Maybe the Bears should look to the West Side, where the Blackhawks' John McDonough took over a front office that was 50 years behind the times and nearly from scratch built a genuine organization prepared for the modern world.

Not only did he build a business infrastructure where none existed, but he hired Scotty Bowman, who in turn brought in Joel Quenneville, and three Stanley Cups later the Hawks are a model franchise, 10 years after being arguably the worst franchise in professional sports.

Rocky Wirtz made a choice to hand over the keys to someone who already had experience as a team president - a family outsider - and he let him do his job.

This is not something the McCaskeys have ever had an appetite for, handing over the keys to a family outsider. They fancy themselves football experts and they like to hire and fire GMs and coaches every few years, and the results since 1985 speak volumes.

There would have to be a major change in thinking for George McCaskey to give up that sort of control, and without it McDonough would never consider it.

If you give him the power, he expects to be able to use it.

Furthermore, McDonough would again seek out the best there is, and he would want to bring in someone like Bill Belichick to run the football side. Not that he could actually get the Pats' boss, but he would want to spend tens of millions to try to get the best people available.

Would McCaskey ever spend that kind of money to completely rebuild the Bears?

Beyond that, of course, there is the matter of McDonough's contract with the Hawks, whether he has an out for the NFL and what Wirtz would be willing to do to keep him.

There is also paying McDonough, who is already making a pretty penny and would want twice as much to run an NFL franchise.

Of course, this all assumes that McDonough would even be interested. Knowing how much he enjoys a challenge, and given that this is the NFL we're talking about, you would have to think he'd at least listen.

Many things would have to occur for any of this to work, but clearly something has to change with the Bears.

The football experts, McCaskey and Phillips, hired a consultant to help them find Pace, who in turn found Fox. It's not the first time the Bears have stumbled and bumbled into a mess like this.

So where do they go from here? Is Fox back next year? Does Pace deserve more time? Is the team in the market for someone to take the reins from McCaskey and Phillips?

All interesting questions - and it's no longer too soon to ask them.

brozner@dailyherald.com

• Hear Barry Rozner on WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.