Who had the NFL’s worst offseason? Former coach John Fox says it’s the Bears

When John Fox was asked which NFL team had the worst offseason Monday, he pointed to his former employer.

“I think when you’re going to play defense, you’re going to lean on takeaways to help a young offense, and you don’t have a kicker, a reliable kicker, that you’re going to need those points from after some of those turnovers,” Fox said on ESPN’s “NFL Live,” where he serves as an analyst. “I think the kicking question is really big right now in Chicago. And I think that might be a problem for them in the season.”

Fox, of course, was the Bears’ head coach when they cut their all-time leading scorer, Robbie Gould. In Fox’s final season with the team, the Bears employed three kickers during the course of the season: Connor Barth, Cairo Santos and Mike Nugent.

The team currently has two kickers competing to replace the departed Cody Parkey: Eddy Piñeiro and Elliott Fry.

On the same ESPN show, former player Damien Woody also singled out the Bears for having the worst offseason.

“Losing [defensive coordinator] Vic Fangio … I think is huge,” Woody said. “That Chicago Bears defense, it literally fueled their offense. It’s the identity of the Bears. And when you lose a talented defensive coordinator like that, I think there’s going to be some slippage there.”