Chicago Bears: John Fox Leash on Mike Glennon Already Clear
By Erik Lambert
Mike Glennon is going to start Week 1 for the Chicago Bears. His performance in Tennessee was enough to cement that for head coach John Fox.
Unfortunately there is a lot stacked against the veteran former backup. Not only did he just lose his top wide receiver Cameron Meredith to a bad knee injury. The open schedule for Chicago is positively brutal. Three of the first four teams they face (Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Green Bay) were in conference championships last year. The other, Tampa Bay, demolished the Bears 36-10 in their meeting last season.
Glennon is going to need every bit of help from the rest of the roster to pull off a reasonable navigation of that gauntlet. Even getting out of the first eight games at 3-5 would be considered an accomplishment. Can he do it? There are plenty of doubts, leaving some to wonder just how long Fox would wait before making a switch to the rookie Mitch Trubisky.
Turns out there may already be a template for that.
Fox already had a method back in 2011 with Denver
Crazy as it may sound this isn’t the first quarterback controversy that Fox has had to juggle as head coach. Back in 2011 in his first year with the Denver Broncos he experienced another. Per usual he decided to go with the veteran, in this case former Bear Kyle Orton. Things didn’t start well. The Broncos lost four of the first five games. Two of them by three points or less. Going into the bye week, Fox felt the team needed a spark.
So he made the switch to second-year man Tim Tebow. Despite his questionable passing, the late-game heroics of the Tebow and resurgent defensive effort gave the Broncos seven wins over the next eight games. It was enough to get the team a division title and wild card playoff berth. One would expect a similar approach for the Bears.
In other words give Glennon until the bye to prove whether or not he deserves to hold the job. If he fails, Trubisky gets two weeks of practice to prepare him for taking over. Chicago has its bye the week of November 5th. They play back-to-back home games against Green Bay and Detroit. That sounds like a perfect situation to drop a rookie QB into.
We’ll see if Glennon changes that.