Boring? All Knox Does Is Win

News item: Rams Ready to Offer Head Coach’s Job to Chuck Knox.

General reaction throughout the league, across the country and around Anaheim Stadium: B-O-R-I-N-G.

Boring because that’s the worry-free, thought-free easy way out--whenever possible, hire a vet, for as you know, burned-out NFL coaches are 100% recyclable, biodegradable (they inevitably return to earth) and always environmentally safe (unless they are Buddy Ryan).

Boring because the Rams need a new direction and Knox is old, 59 years old.

Boring because the Rams recycled Knox once already, hiring him in 1973 and dispatching him in 1978, and didn’t reach a Super Bowl until after he left.

Boring because Knox is . . . well, boring. That has always been his personally assigned adjective, hasn’t it?

Broadway Joe Namath.

Neon Deion Sanders.

Boring Chuck Knox.

By now, it has been approved and officially licensed by the NFL’s properties division.

But what’s your definition of boring? If consistency is what bores you, Knox is your man; in 19 seasons, his postseason totals are 11 playoff appearances, seven division championships, four conference finals and no Super Bowls. If defense punches your snooze button, Knox is guilty again; his 1975 Rams yielded the second-lowest number of points in league history (135); and his last Seattle team, the one that sent him packing, set a franchise record for least number of points (261) allowed in a season.

The dictionary, however, defines boring as “tiresome . . . (the act of making one) weary and restless by being uninteresting.” If that’s the charge here, and if Knox chooses to contest it, he can build a case the same way he has built football teams.

In other words, he’d probably win.

In the NFL, excitement means offense and exciting offenses begin and end with the guy calling for the center snap, assuming he can field the center snap. On the thrill-o-rama meter, Knox was only going to go as far as his quarterback was capable--and only twice in Knox’s career did he have quarterbacks capable of high-octane fun.

The first was his first, John Hadl, who ravaged the NFC with long-distance strikes to Harold Jackson and passed for 22 touchdowns in 14 games. Hadl was the league’s most valuable player that year and the Rams, the Chuck Knox-coached Rams, led the league in scoring that year.

The other was Joe Ferguson, who quarterbacked all five of Knox’s Buffalo Bill clubs and whose exploits have been obscured in the Jim Kelly era. But Ferguson threw for more than 3,500 yards twice, 2,800 yards another time and, in 1981, enabled a beaten-up 34-year-old wide receiver named Frank Lewis to lead the league in pass-reception yardage.

Besides Hadl and Ferguson, however, Knox’s selection of trigger-men has been positively pedestrian: James Harris (too erratic), Pat Haden (too short), Ron Jaworski (too young), Joe Namath (too old), Jim Zorn (too skittish), David Krieg (too unreliable). Now, if and when, he arrives in Anaheim and inherits Jim Everett.

Too late?

Also, whenever Knox has signed on to rehabilitate the boarded-up slums of Los Angeles, Buffalo and Seattle, he arrived with the subtlety of a wrecking ball.

Boring: In 1973, as soon as he was hired by Carroll Rosenbloom to coach the Rams, Knox’s first two moves were to trade the franchise’s most popular player, Roman Gabriel, and a Pro Bowl defensive lineman, Coy Bacon. In return, he received Jackson and Hadl, the pass-and-catch combo that transported the Rams from 6-7-1 third-place finishers to 12-2 NFC West champions.

Boring: In 1974, months removed from his MVP season, Hadl is dealt to Green Bay for two first-round draft choices, two second-round picks and a third. By utilizing or trading those picks, Knox would acquire a Pro Bowl cornerback (Pat Thomas), a wide receiver who started in two NFC title games (Ron Jessie) and a defensive tackle who started in the Rams’ only Super Bowl appearance (Mike Fanning).

Boring: In 1978, minutes off the plane from L.A. to Buffalo, Knox trades the untradable O.J. Simpson to San Francisco for four high draft choices. Two of them will become Joe Cribbs and Jim Kelly.

Boring: In 1983, settling in at Seattle, Knox trades a second- and a third-round pick to Houston for their No. 1. With it, Knox drafts Curt Warner and, ever stodgy, allows the rookie to lead the AFC is rushing.

Every new coach is granted a honeymoon period, especially when he’s hired to overhaul a loser, but who besides Knox is three-for-three in crossing the threshold?

Before Knox, the Rams hadn’t made the playoffs for three consecutive seasons. With him, they won the NFC West five times in five years.

Before Knox, Buffalo was 2-12 in 1976 and 3-11 in 1977. Knox took over in 1978 and by 1980, the Bills were AFC East champions.

Before Knox, Seattle had a three-year record of 14-27. In Knox’s first season, the Seahawks played for the AFC title.

To bore or not bore, that’s in the eye of the beholder. Rosenbloom branded Knox indelibly when he derided him out of L.A. for what Rosenbloom considered to be unimaginative play-calling compounded by unimaginative script endings. Five division championships, no Super Bowl championships. How boring can you get?

Ralph Wilson, owner of the long-starved Bills, had the answer when he coaxed Knox to come north in 1978. “In Buffalo,” Wilson told Knox, “they’re happy if you win, 3-2.”

Buffalo ‘78, Anaheim ’92. Other than 70 degrees on the thermometer, what’s the difference? You tell me what’s really boring--losing to Minnesota and Dallas in the conference final every December . . . or losing 11 of 16 one year and 13 of 16 the next?

Knox is a rebuilder, a stabilizer, if not a quantum leaper. His months are July through December; January he leaves to Joe Gibbs and Bill Parcells. He is cursed by never having won the big one, but Anaheim once hired a baseball manager with the same reputation and could have done a good deal worse. Notice, please, the flight of the Angels since Gene Mauch announced his retirement.

These Rams, bedraggled and confused, are precisely Knox’s kind of team. Given his resume, within a year, Knox would restore the defense, the running game and the Rams’ self-esteem. Within two, there’d be a playoff berth.

If this is what the Rams want, if this and maybe nothing more is what they can live with, Knox is the choice to make. They can get him if they pay him, but right now, the Rams’ reported offer of $500,000 per year is $400,000 short of the salary he made in Seattle. If Green Bay enters the picture and, say, lobs $1 million Knox’s way, the Rams will have underpriced themselves out of the market again.

Talk about boring.