Photo Credit: Tim Warner/ Getty

Bryan Cox, Sr. spent the last three seasons as the defensive line coach for the Atlanta Falcons. He was fired three days after the team’s historic defensive collapse in the Super Bowl, along with defensive coordinator Richard Smith. Cox isn’t quite sure about how this happened.


“You go from your unit playing really well in the Super Bowl and sacking the quarterback five times and having (nine) quarterback hits ... and (three) days later you get fired. I wasn’t given an answer to why I was fired. I was left to go back and kind of play stuff over,” he told the Charlotte Observer in an interview this week, shortly after the Carolina Panthers signed his son Bryan Cox, Jr. as an undrafted free agent.

Cox does have one idea about why the team might have wanted to fire him:

“The only thing I can come up with is the combine incident that kind of led to it.”


He’s referring, of course, to the fact that he shoved a scout at the combine a year ago and had to publicly apologize. Could that be it? Hmm. I wonder! Life is so full of beautiful mysteries.

[Charlotte Observer]