Free With Mistakes, Not Like a Knox Team

In 1940, in the Battle of France, the French general, Maxime Weygand, belatedly put in charge, flew over the battlefield to see his demoralized, defeated troops in confusion below.

“They have handed me a disaster,” he gloomed.

I have to think something of the same sort crossed the mind of the coach, Chuck Knox, when they handed him the command of the Los Angeles Rams this year. This is not a team, it’s a rout.

Chuck Knox, in his second term, is both the team’s 15th and 18th coach. He has a better winning percentage than any in the team’s history. But when he first came to the Rams from Detroit, where he was a $24,000-a-year assistant, in 1973, Chuck wasn’t handed a disaster, he was handed a pretty good football team. It had won only six games the year before, and lost seven, but it had Merlin Olsen, Jack Youngblood, Larry Brooks and Harold Jackson on it and Knox had no trouble winning 12 games with it, the most games any Ram coach had ever won.

Knox won three division championships with that team. He went 12-2, 10-4, 12-2, 10-3 and 10-4. And the owner showed him the door because he didn’t win flashily enough. For most owners, a victory is flashy enough, but Carroll Rosenbloom wanted Hollywood flourishes. Knox preferred to win the blue-collar way. For one thing, he didn’t have a quarterback. With a flashy quarterback, you can bring the crowd to its feet while you get beat, 52-48. But Chuck Knox never had a 48-point quarterback. Their highlight films were 9-7 games.

There’s not a football coach alive who doesn’t realize defense wins games, but Rosenbloom, who used to take a helicopter to the practice field and sit in a director’s chair, wanted to part the Red Sea, not lay brick.

In Buffalo, another owner, Ralph Wilson, whose team had been 2-12 and 3-11 the previous years, announced, “12-2 isn’t boring, 2-12 is boring” and signed Knox, who took the 3-11 team and, within three years, was going 11-5 and 10-6 and in the playoffs.

Chuck Knox got a reputation for raising the dead. Whenever he got a team, it was lying on a slab with a tag on its toe. He left Buffalo in 1983 for Seattle, where the team had gone 4-5 the year before--a strike year--and 6-10 and 4-12 the years before that. It couldn’t frost a glass.

Knox put them within a game of the Super Bowl his first year.

So, a lot of people were in hopes Knox could come into the Ram camp this year and tell the team to take up its bed and walk.

The team didn’t put anybody in mind of the Lombardi Packers--or even the Landry Cowboys. It had no running attack to speak of. You remember when they called the Pittsburgh defense the Steel Curtain? Well, the Rams’ was more like the lace curtain. It had lots of holes in it. What it lacked in talent, it made up for in inexperience.

But Knox was used to that. What this team had was something Knox had never really had in his other incarnations--a quarterback. Jim Everett was no Joe Montana, but he could inspire fear in a zone defense. Knox had always had quarterbacks, like an over-the-hill John Hadl, Shack Harris, Ron Jaworski, Joe Ferguson, Dave Krieg and Jim Zorn--guys who inspired more fear in their offensive line than the opponent’s secondary. Not surprisingly, they would be overmatched by the likes of Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Jim Plunkett or John Elway when the playoff crunch came.

When the Rams lost their opening game to the Buffalo Bills this year, 40-7, the football community was shocked. They didn’t think Chuck Knox would lose to the German army, 40-7. Knox teams lose 24-23, 27-26, 30-28. Look it up. They do not lose 40-7.

But Knox, characteristically, went to work on his disaster. His forces climbed out of the debris and rubble. They won a few, they lost a few. They lost to the 49ers, who might be as good as the Bills--but 27-24, not 40-7. They acquired respect, albeit not awe.

Knox’s last Buffalo team had lost games--but by 24-23 and 9-7. His last Seattle team lost to the Raiders, 23-20, and 49ers, 24-22.

Respectability comes slowly. But the Knox Rams thought they had bought it with their 38-17 walloping of the Giants and their doughty game against Atlanta. They lost that, 30-28. But that’s a Knox loss. That’s almost encouraging.

Knox has always prided himself on what he calls “risk-free” football. Basically, that means mistake-free. A Knox team is celebrated for not beating itself.

So, they came up to Sunday’s game with the Phoenix Cardinals feeling good about themselves. Things were falling into place. The gamblers had installed them as five-point favorites. The Phoenix team is a carefree collection of individuals who only sporadically play like a team. The Cardinals seemed ripe for the taking by a methodical Knox team, which had been carefully working out the bugs.

One of the bugs they had been working out was the game-killing fumble. Knox calls this his “ball-security” drill. They did everything but attach handles to the ball while they worked with running back Cleveland Gary, who sometimes handles the ball like a seal in a circus and once fumbled away the ball 12 times in 15 games, which is bear-down fumbling.

Still, he had cut his Oopses! down to two this year, neither one of them fatal, and the signs were all positive for the Rams on Sunday. The Cardinals had the ball most of the afternoon. But the Rams didn’t need it. The Cardinals kept frittering away their advantage with abortive field goal attempts and, finally, the Rams had the lead, 14-13, and the ball with 9:27 to go. It was a Knox situation. He couldn’t have ordered a better one from room service. All his team had to do was keep the ball. If there’s one thing a Knox team can do, it’s keep the ball.

With the minutes ticking away, the Rams maneuvered downfield. They got down to the Phoenix 17. Gary had fumbled twice earlier, once the ball squirting harmlessly out of bounds, but the other setting up Phoenix’s first touchdown, during the third quarter.

Still, everyone knew what Ground Chuck Knox does there. Hammer the line, run out the clock, steer the game into the hangar. Piece of cake.

So, Cleveland Gary hammered the line. The line hammered back. Gary went one way, the ball went the other. A Phoenix Cardinal picked up the loose ball and ran it into touchdown range. Phoenix scored the winning touchdown with only 2:04 left.

Knox has been there before. Gen. Weygand would have understood perfectly. The coach stood in the locker room. “We’ve got 25 guys who average 25 years of age or less,” he offered.

They’ll get older. Will they get better?

“Was it a devastating loss?” Knox is asked.

“Every loss is a devastating loss,” he answers. “I never met a loss I liked.”

Whether he has been handed a disaster or an opportunity might take more than this year to figure out. All the Rams have to face in the next three weeks are the Cowboys, 49ers and Minnesota Vikings. A French general would be looking for an armistice. Knox says that will build character.