Point of Departure

HOUSTON —  John Fox didn’t come to the Super Bowl with his heart on his sleeve.

He wore it on his finger.

As a reminder of what it feels like to come this far and lose, the coach of the Carolina Panthers brought to Houston the NFC championship ring he won as defensive coordinator of the New York Giants, who lost to Baltimore in the Super Bowl three years ago.

“This is about the first time it has ever been out of the box,” he said in his first meeting with the media, lifting his hand to show a ring encrusted with blue stones. “I wear it just as a reminder. This game is only fun when you win, and that’s true any week, particularly this one.”

Fox, in only his second season as coach, has led the Panthers to their first Super Bowl, having taken over a team that lost its last 15 games in 2001.

But even now as he makes his way to the summit of the football world, Fox is dogged by questions about his mysterious resignation from the Oakland Raiders seven years ago. He was the Raiders’ defensive coordinator in 1996 but abruptly quit two weeks before the start of the season. His departure has never been fully explained.

On Monday, for the second time in two weeks, Fox was asked why he left. His response was curt.

“The situation was one where I wanted to go in a different direction,” he said. “So, I resigned and left.”

Al Davis was even more cryptic last week when asked for an explanation of why Fox quit. The Raider owner hinted the departure had something to do with misbehavior.

“That was personal reasons, and I think he would tell you that,” Davis said. “It’s something I am not allowed to comment on. It was an unfortunate thing but I think as he’s told people, it woke him up and it helped his career. You’d have to ask him, and I think he would tell you that he will not comment on it.”

The day Fox resigned was just as strange as those explanations. He had brought his young son to Napa for training camp the day before he left, and he and his wife recently had purchased a home in the Bay Area. He gave no interviews on his way out, leaving only a one-sentence note that said he had stepped down for “personal reasons.”

There was speculation at the time that he left because he was tired of taking orders from Davis, who insiders say was fuming after an embarrassing performance by the Raider defense in an exhibition game at Atlanta a day earlier. The players seemed as in the dark as anyone about the situation.

“It’s kind of a shock,” Oakland defensive tackle Chester McGlockton said at the time. “Just when you get used to a guy after two years, he’s gone. That’s the nature of the business and the beast. I’m sure Al had something to do with it. But you have to go with it from there.”

Fox took a year off from coaching after that experience and moved his family to St. Louis, where he worked for the Rams as a consultant. He was hired as defensive coordinator of the Giants in 1997 and stayed until replacing George Seifert as Carolina’s coach in early 2002.

The effect on the Panthers was obvious and almost immediate. They rocketed to second in the league in total defense after finishing last in that category the season before, and they went 7-9. That six-game swing for a team that went 1-15 in 2001 was the largest improvement in the league in 2002, and only two rookie head coaches had a more significant effect on their teams since the NFL switched to a 16-game schedule in 1978: Detroit’s Bobby Ross in 1992 and New Orleans’ Jim Haslett in 2000.

“Once we got John Fox in, I could see that things were going to change real quick,” said safety Mike Minter, who was a free agent after the 1-15 season and came within hours of signing with the Cleveland Browns before reconsidering. “I could see that we were going to get where we wanted to go quicker than most people thought.

“He came in and set a standard. Before he came here, we did not have a standard that we wanted to play by and live by for the Carolina Panthers.... He said he wanted smart, tough, more better-conditioned football players than anybody else in the league. That’s the standard that he set.”

Beloved by his players and by Jerry Richardson, Carolina’s owner, Fox came with the gold-seal recommendations of Wellington Mara, longtime owner of the New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Steeler owner Dan Rooney.

Fox and General Manager Marty Hurney have made some masterful moves to get their team to this point, among them signing running back Stephen Davis and little-known quarterback Jake Delhomme. Davis, a Washington Redskin reject, put together the best season by a running back in Carolina history. And Delhomme, a backup in New Orleans, has made the most of his first season as an NFL starter, becoming the latest unheralded quarterback to lead his team the Super Bowl, following in the footsteps of Kurt Warner, Trent Dilfer and Tom Brady.

All that, and Fox did not garner a single coach-of-the-year vote.

“He’s the coach of the year in my book,” wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad said.

“I don’t think he has gotten the credit he should be getting for what he’s done with the team these last two years. We’ve done leaps and bounds to overcome great obstacles.”

One more obstacle remains, and Fox need only glance at his ring finger to remember it.

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Super Turnarounds

Carolina’s John Fox, above, coached biggest two-year turnaround to a Super Bowl. (SB - Super Bowl season; Before - two years before):

*--* Year Team SB Before 2003 Carolina 11-5 1-15 1981 San Francisco 13-3 2-14 1998 Atlanta 14-2 3-13 1971 Miami 10-3-1 3-10-1 1981 Cincinnati 12-4 4-12 1997 Green Bay 13-3 4-12

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