A Change of Habit : Behring, Flores, Knox Are Used to Winning, but Seahawks Struggle Under Their Guidance

Ken Behring has an estimated $400 million and an expensive plaything, the Seattle Seahawks.

For more than 40 of his 61 years, Behring, formerly a financial prodigy, now a California-based real estate investor, has been well off.

He had been born poor in Monroe, Wis., and in his late 20s he started sending money home to his parents, who lost their farm in the Great Depression but didn’t want to leave the state.

They didn’t trust banks, so Behring sent cash.

Years later, when his mother died, they found that money under her mattress.

“I hated being poor,” he said. “As a kid, the only two things I enjoyed were playing football and being around cars.”

Behring still has the same hobbies. He owns more than 250 automobiles, most of them hand-crafted in the 1920s and ‘30s when they were out of his reach. And last year he bought a football team, something he’d wanted since his days as a high school fullback.

“I guess childhood dreams are the ones that matter,” he said.

The irony about the Seahawks is that in Behring’s first full year as their owner--which has also been Tom Flores’ first as president and general manager--they have slipped out of contention after a six-year roll with a veteran coach, Chuck Knox.

A playoff team four times since 1983, the Seahawks won the AFC West championship as recently as last season. But this season, they started 4-8 before winning their last two to stay in contention mathematically--if not realistically--for a few more days.

Going into the Raider game Sunday night at the Kingdome, Seattle’s players and coaches illustrate what pro football has come to on the eve of the 1990s: Except for one or two teams that stand out every year and the two or three that don’t, the NFL has become a might-have-been league.

Most clubs might have been a division champion.

Each year, at least 20 of the 28 clubs just miss, or just make, the playoffs.

As New Orleans linebacker Pat Swilling said, speaking for about 500 other NFL veterans in all six divisions: “We are a good football team. We just won’t be going to the playoffs to show it.”

At his desk, Flores, who led the Raiders to two Super Bowl titles in his nine years as their coach, appraised the Seahawks’ down-and-up season the way most other general managers are doing, or will do, for their organizations.

“We are three or four plays away from being in the hunt,” he said. “We’re two plays away from 8-6--a missed kick in Denver . . . and an interception in the first Kansas City game.”

Still, by a 1980s measurement, the Seahawks have flopped, unless they win their last two games against the Raiders and the Washington Redskins.

Does Behring hold someone responsible?

“I’m not panicking and I’m not blaming Chuck,” he said, noting that in 1983-88, Knox was one of only five NFL coaches to escape a losing season. “What we’ve got to do is get him some more players.

“We need impact players, and we can make a start in the next draft with our two first-round choices.

“This isn’t a typical Knox team, by the way. He’s never had a team like this that gave the game away.”

Knox can hardly believe his team. The Seahawks have led the league in fumbles most of the year. They’ve also had trouble running the ball in their famous ground-Chuck offense.

So they’ve had to pass.

Analyzing the 1989 season before Seattle upset Cincinnati Sunday, Knox said: “We’re having a temporary setback.”

That doesn’t set well in this community, where pro football became a big favorite during Knox’s winning years and where, as in all communities with successful teams, fans expect to win forever.

The rumor that won’t die is that Knox may be replaced by Flores--not that Flores believes it.

“I don’t have the fire to coach right now,” he said.

Identifying Knox’s problem, Flores said: “Winning is everything, in the eyes of a lot of people. Anything less than a win is total failure--and you know the first guy they always want to get rid of.

“I don’t know how long Chuck wants to coach, but I have no reason not to keep him.”

Knox said: “I plan to coach as long as I enjoy it and as long as I’m maintaining the level of excellence I want.”

That, apparently, will be at least two more seasons. In 1985 he signed a rare seven-year contract with former Seahawk president Mike McCormack, a Hall of Famer installed by the former owners, the department store Nordstroms.

And in 1990 and ‘91, Knox will average nearly $1 million a year, regardless of whether he’s here. The contract is guaranteed.

In both years, the Seahawks will either just make or just miss the playoffs. That’s the NFL today.

BOZ AND BLATT

A Tacoma sportswriter, Bart Wright of the Morning News Tribune, reviewed the Seahawks’ troubles when they were 4-8 and concluded: “This team has got to the point where you’d bring in Chuck Knox to fix it if he weren’t already here.”

Did the Seahawks make a wrong turn somewhere?

If so, the problem was in the front office, at just the wrong time--in the first 90 days after Seattle dethroned Denver as 1988 division champion.

During that span last winter--a rebuilding period for all NFL people--Behring’s club was led by three general managers at a time when the new owner had only been around for four months.

At the same time, Seattle’s rivals dreamed up trades, schemed for free agents, got ready for the draft and evaluated Plan B prospects, freed when each club could freeze only its best 37.

In Denver, an aggressive off-season rebuilding program brought in valuable rookies, free agents and Plan B imports, and the Broncos have another division title--succeeding the Seahawks--to show for it.

The difference in Seattle, where only one Plan B player and five draft choices made the opening-day roster, is that the Seahawks had a comic-opera off-season before a real tragedy occurred.

The second man in Behring’s parade of general managers, Mike Blatt, was charged with murder.

Blatt, 47, was jailed for allegedly plotting to kill the business associate he blamed for the loss of his job with the Seahawks.

The associate, Laurence Carnegie, who had written an unflattering letter to the ballclub--or so Blatt charged--was slain with a crossbow last Feb. 28 by two men who have pleaded guilty and have agreed to testify against Blatt.

He is being held for trial in Stockton.

In Seattle, the Seahawks are still being criticized for too little action while Blatt was aboard, as well as too much action earlier when they brought in Brian Bosworth and Kelly Stouffer, two non-players for whom they paid heavily.

Stouffer, a quarterback from Colorado State who wouldn’t sign with the Phoenix Cardinals after they drafted him No. 1 last year, has been used to goad Dave Krieg into playing better, which, lately, he has.

Bosworth is on injured reserve, and the Seahawks have been stuck with the former Oklahoma linebacker since winning him in the supplemental-draft lottery of 1987.

In those days, Bosworth was so highly rated by NFL scouts that any team earning the right to draft him could have been expected to do so.

What’s more, he showed NFL ability in some of his appearances for Seattle--possibly Pro Bowl ability. According to Seahawk opponents, the report that Boz is a bust is a misreading of his problem.

Bosworth’s failing is physical: He hasn’t shown needed ruggedness. Out for the season with two injured shoulders and a bad knee, he seems too brittle for the NFL.

He might, of course, just be accident-prone--but, after bulking up at Oklahoma, he has yet to play a full season for the Seahawks.

Now on a light-exercise program in the Seattle area, Bosworth is too embarrassed to attend Kingdome games.

“There’s no reason for him to be here,” Knox said, “until he can do some heavy lifting again.”

The question is whether the day will ever come.

KEN BEHRING

The signs on Ken Behring’s office doors near Seattle and in Danville, Calif., could well read, “Donald Trump West.”

A busy real estate investor, Behring lives in a new $13-million California home, stashes his $100-million collection of old cars in a $12-million museum nearby, travels in a private DC-9 or, occasionally, a 97-foot yacht, and owns a football team that Trump would like if he couldn’t have his own league.

The future of the Seahawks hinges on the contributions of Behring, Flores and Knox, but, without Behring’s contribution, the others’ wouldn’t matter.

One of the league’s 13 rich new owners, he is a rumpled, rotund, balding grandson of German immigrants who stands under 5 feet 9 and weighs more than 200 pounds.

Once voted worst-dressed guest at his own party, Behring is usually seen in a golf shirt if he is seen at all. He is one of those unassuming persons who are always just part of the background, even when they own the background. And the foreground.

From a standing start, he made the Forbes list of multimillionaires in the 1980s. In his youth, his mother took in laundry to support him and his sister, who died young.

Behring was a teen-age used-car dealer. He sometimes took bicycles and even horses in trade.

He had bought his first car with a borrowed $90 when he was 15. A year later he was in a new car every month.

His executive assistant in Seattle, Sharon Nelson, said Behring’s vision separates him from others. In 1972, when his net worth after a few years in Florida was $30 million and he couldn’t think of what to do with it, he took a helicopter ride in San Francisco one day and saw a farm that he envisioned as a city.

The 5,000-acre Blackhawk Ranch, rebuilt as a business-residential community with woods and lakes and shops, is the centerpiece of Behring’s empire. It is just a coincidence, he said, that he lives in a world of Hawks: the NFL Seahawks and--30 miles east of San Francisco--the Blackhawk development.

With his wife, Patricia, the mother of his five sons, Behring resides in a massive, modern castle on Blackhawk’s highest hill, where he is, literally, king of the mountain. The mansion, with its flat roofs and stone slabs, its pools and waterfalls, has obvious Frank Lloyd Wright touches.

One waterfall is in the master bathroom, where the other conversation piece is a nude statue.

There is an elevator whose bottom stop is the wine cellar, with 10,000 bottles.

The house is so big--enclosing 29,000 square feet--that Behring parks seven of his favorite cars in the ballroom. One is Clark Gable’s old Duesenberg.

Increasingly these days, Behring leaves it all behind. Boarding his jet, he tells the pilot to head north. The Seahawks fascinate him.

He has only one regret about his $100-million NFL investment, a purchase he made in association with business partner Kenneth Hofmann, who holds a 25% interest,

“I can’t (run) the team,” Behring complained in a visit with Seattle Times reporter Richard Seven. “That’s considered meddling.”

TOM FLORES

Few people are better qualified to be president and general manager of the Seahawks than Tom Flores.

Three decades ago, he launched his professional career as a player, starting as a Raider quarterback before backing up Len Dawson on a championship team, the Kansas City Chiefs, who beat the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV in January 1970.

Upon rejoining the Raiders, Flores became one of seven who have coached two or more Super Bowl winners. The others are Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, Joe Gibbs and Bill Walsh.

At the University of the Pacific, Flores was an education major. With the Raiders, in both Oakland and Los Angeles, he was actively involved, along with the other coaches, in player evaluation and acquisition.

For years, he has enjoyed a close relationship with Al Davis, the Raider monarch who has influenced pro football since the 1960s.

If Behring is Donald Trump West, will Flores be Al Davis Northwest?

“Not exactly,” Flores said. “The Seahawks are my whole professional life now--but not my whole life. Al Davis’ whole life is his wife and that football team.”

At his third NFL stop in the same division, Flores, 52, has become the middleman in the Seahawks’ Behring-Flores-Knox brain trust.

“My biggest job will be keeping a fresh supply of players coming in,” Flores said. “A winning (general manager) is a guy who takes some chances and succeeds. You have to be bold enough to take a chance.”

Flores is quiet but persistent, pleasant but tough. He is a slender, black-haired native of Sanger, Calif., where his father settled after leaving Mexico at 12. From earliest childhood, Tom and his older brother worked with their parents in the fields.

Tom Flores’ escape was his size. When he grew to be a foot taller than his buddies, he went into football and a new life.

He and wife Barbara, parents of twin sons and a daughter, live in a condominium near Behring’s, overlooking Lake Washington.

There is also a Seahawk South in the La Quinta area, where Flores, Behring and Knox all have desert condos.

They conferred there before Flores came aboard last March, succeeding Blatt, who had been in charge for most of January and February after succeeding McCormack.

Blatt, known in the NFL as a small-time player agent, will be remembered in Seahawk history as, among other things, the finder who put the Behring and Nordstrom people together.

McCormack will be remembered as the general manager who didn’t have to be fired. He brought in Knox and winning personnel.

Somehow, in the change from Nordstrom to Behring, McCormack was eased out when Blatt eased himself, temporarily, in.

CHUCK KNOX

Since Vince Lombardi’s day, the 28 NFL clubs have hired 182 head coaches. Of these, only 13 have coached Super Bowl winners.

Knox, who keeps track, reminisces about all that when reminded that he has never coached a Super Bowl team.

At 57, his goal in a might-have-been league is simply to be slightly ahead of most other teams at all times--which, because of the NFL’s heavy and consistent parity influences, is harder than it sounds.

The NFL has hired 135 head coaches and fired most of them since Knox entered the league in 1973. He has competed against and outlasted Hank Stram, Paul Brown, Sid Gillman, John Madden, John Ralston, Don Coryell, Dan Devine, Howard Schnellenberger, Bud Grant, Norm Van Brocklin and Weeb Ewbank, among others.

Knox’s forte is repairing losers, getting them into the playoffs and keeping them there. In his first 16 NFL years, he led 11 teams into the playoffs and narrowly missed with another that finished 10-6.

His present team won’t be remembered as one of his best. It has fumbled too often and misfired on too many clutch plays, and if Knox is responsible for his good teams, he is also to blame for the bad ones.

“This season is payback time (for the Seahawks) to the law of averages,” said a Seattle columnist, Art Thiel of the Post-Intelligencer.

Noting that the Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos, New York Giants and other pro clubs have also been up and down, Thiel added: “Bad seasons for every NFL team are as abrupt and inevitable as a Palouse snowstorm.”

In the reckoning, Knox will be judged on how he rebounds. He always has come out fighting.

His personality is pugilistic. He has the manner and the looks of a good, cocky boxer.

Born into the family of a Pennsylvania steelworker, Knox played football with his older brother at an age when Flores was helping his father in the fields and Behring was helping his mother wring out the neighbors’ laundry.

Of the steelworker’s sons, one grew up to be a high school football coach, the other a pro coach. And on a Pro Bowl team once, Knox had three players that his brother had coached in high school--Alan Page, Tim Fox and Dan Dierdorf.

The father of three daughters and a son, Knox resides with wife Shirley in a Seattle suburb, their third upscale suburban home in three states in 17 years.

During NFL tenures in Los Angeles, Buffalo and Seattle, Knox has been known for two things: He has won division titles everywhere, and he has always lacked a commanding quarterback--a John Elway or Warren Moon or even a Wade Wilson. The best quarterback Knox ever had was probably Pat Haden, although Krieg has shown everything but consistency.

Part of the reason for the long-established ground-Chuck philosophy is that his teams sometimes couldn’t pass much even if Knox wanted to.

“There are two ways to look at that, I suppose,” he said. “The guy should have drafted better. Or the guy’s done a heck of a job with what he had.”

The right answer is probably both of the above.

BACKGROUND For most of the decade, the Seattle Seahawks have been a contender in the National Football League’s AFC West, reaching the playoffs four times after 1983 under Coach Chuck Knox. This season, after a change in ownership and other front-office confusion, the defending division champions stumbled at the start of the season and only recently have shown signs of recovery.