Earle "Greasy" Neale Award
Professional Coach of the Year

Dick Jauron, Chicago Bears

Dick Jauron is so calm and even-tempered, it is sometimes hard to fit him into the role of Chicago Bears head coach.  After all, this is a franchise once coached by the crusty Papa Bear, George Halas, and later the fiery Mike Ditka, who threw clipboards and head sets around the sidelines even when the Bears were winning.

Jauron displays little or no emotion, regardless of the score.  But he is similar to Halas and Ditka in the one area that matters most:  He knows how to win.  In the 2001 season, the former Yale star led the surprising Bears to 13-3 regular season finish and the NFC Central Division title.

Jauron was a landslide winner of the Maxwell Football Club's 13th annual Greasy Neale Award for Professional Coach of the Year.  He received 423 of 810 votes cast, finishing well ahead of Pittsburgh's Bill Cowher (171) and New England's Bill Belichick (102).  Voting is done by NFL coaches, the Pro Writers of America and the Maxwell Football Club members.

The Bears had losing records in their first two years under Jauron, finishing 6-10 in 1999 and 5-11 the following season, but the coach never panicked and his steady hand is credited with the team maturing into a division champion and advancing to the playoffs for the first time since 1994.

"I love playing for him personally," Pro Bowl linebacker Brian Urlacher said.  "I think everyone on this team would say the same thing.  He's a stand-up guy.  He stands up for what he believes in.  He's not a real talker because talking doesn't win games.  Players win games and making plays wins games.  He tells us that."

"Everyone gives him a bum rap because he's not real vocal with the media.  But when he needs to get us going, he gets us going."

Instead of yelling and getting all rah-rah, he takes a different method," linebacker Warrick Holdman said.  "He just tells you what needs to be done.  He not the guy who's going to go in the middle of the team room and break a chair or crack the chalkboard over his head."

Jauron won the loyalty of the players during the tough times by never singling out any individuals for public criticism.  When things went wrong, he took the blame.  The players and assistant coaches admired his quiet strength, which paid dividends in the breakthrough 2001 season.

"I have never seen (Jauron) take a player who was struggling and maybe played an awful game and berate that player to protect himself," said Mike Singletary, the Bears Hall of Fame linebacker, who won a Super Bowl under Mike Ditka.  "That's a real tribute.  There were some opportunities when he could have...really jumped on the bandwagon to save himself and he didn't take the opportunity.  He took the high road."

"From Day One, he has treated me like a man," said defensive end Phillip Daniels.  "He asked me about my family and how they were doing.  Most coaches aren't concerned with that.  They're concerned with winning and that's it.  He's not like that.  I just see something different in him.  He's a team player, he's a player's coach."

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