Knox Starting Anew Where It All Ended : Pro football: He will lead Rams in exhibition opener at Kingdome against Seattle, his team of the last nine years.
Leading a new team into his old city, Chuck Knox won’t allow himself to get lost in either sentimentality or public bitterness. But that doesn’t mean he won’t get lost.
The Kingdome, where the Seahawks will play host to the Rams tonight at 6 in both teams’ exhibition opener, is no longer home to Knox, and the visitors’ locker room will be foreign territory for him.
“I’ve never been in that other locker room,” said Knox, who coached the Seahawks for nine years but resigned at the end of last season and a few days later took over the Rams. “I know, generally speaking, where it is but I’ve never been over there.”
This is the stadium where it ended for him, against the Rams in the final game of 1991, which also was John Robinson’s last game with Los Angeles. And this is where it begins again, with Tom Flores coaching the Seahawks and Knox the Rams.
From the moment the exhibition schedule was announced, Knox has downplayed any significance of playing the first game of his second Ram coaching stint against the team he recently left.
But for a man who came to define much of what the Seattle sports scene was all about during the last nine years and then was unceremoniously pushed away, this game has implications even Knox cannot ignore.
“I’m not going to make any special effort to go up there and win that game, have a Pyrrhic victory that would cost us more in the end than it is worth,” Knox said.
“(Coaching against many of his old players), that’ll be different, sure. Some people I’ve coached with, some people I started with in coaching are still up there.
“It’ll be kind of difficult, different to look across and see (Seahawk assistant head coach/defense) Tom Catlin on the other side when he’s been with me for 19 years. . . . I have a lot of respect and admiration for him, obviously.”
Some of those who followed him from Seattle to the Rams say they want to win this game for him and strike a blow at Seattle owner Ken Behring.
They say that because Behring, who bought the team in 1988, never had confidence in Knox and stripped most of his football powers; the coach’s resignation was merely a matter of time.
Knox’s record in Seattle was 80-63 with four playoff berths and one AFC West title. But from 1989 through ‘91, with Behring becoming more active and with Flores, installed as team president, assuming personnel decisions, the team went 23-25. Last year, Seattle was 7-9.
“I’m sure Coach Knox has got to be anxious about going back there and also showing the fans of Seattle that maybe they did make a mistake by not keeping him,” said Ram receiver Jeff Chadwick, who played under Knox for the past three seasons.
“But the thing, too, is he’s happy to be here. Out here, they’re working with Chuck. In Seattle, they weren’t working with him. They were actually opposed to everything he was trying to get done, get accomplished.”
In that Dec. 22 night game last year, Knox’s Seahawks beat Robinson’s Rams, 23-9, ending both of their nine-year tenures with their respective teams. Afterward, in the home locker room, the Seattle veterans gave Knox an emotional farewell.
“We got up for the game because we knew,” Chadwick said. “We didn’t know that Chuck was going to be with the Rams, but we knew that we wanted him to go out in style.”
Joe Vitt, Ram assistant coach on defense and one of five former Seattle assistants to join Knox, says it will be a night of mixed emotions for everyone who used to be in Seattle.
“There’s no question it’s going to be strange,” Vitt said. “Here’s a place where we coached for nine years, and some of the greatest memories of my life are in that building--some big, big wins.
“On the other hand, this has been a tremendous situation down here for us. The management has really shown a commitment to winning by signing our draft choices and trying to get the veterans into camp. This is the best I’ve felt about football since 1983, Chuck’s first year in Seattle.”
As an instant comparison Knox and his Seattle expatriates do not publicly make, it took the Seahawks the exhibition season and into the regular season to sign 1990 No. 1 choice and defensive centerpiece Cortez Kennedy, the third pick overall in that draft. Kennedy, an All-Pro now, was not a factor in his rookie season.
This year, the Rams took defensive centerpiece Sean Gilbert with the third overall pick and signed him the day they drafted him. Gilbert, who will miss tonight’s game because of an ankle injury, is expected to be a starter in the regular season.