Phifer Is Starting to Get It : Rams: Linebacker earns back his first-string spot with a couple of nudges from Knox.

The messages haven’t been cryptic or anything Roman Phifer couldn’t quickly understand.

No decoder is necessary when it’s Chuck Knox sending out the signals.

When the Rams’ 1992 season began, Phifer, perhaps the team’s best athlete, was on the bench, backing Paul Butcher, a hard-working journeyman linebacker.

Phifer, a second-round pick from UCLA in 1991, had spent all training camp running, leaping and doing what he has always been physically capable of doing. He worked at hitting harder to overcome his reputation as a coverage linebacker. He shaved his head to reinforce a tough image.

But it was not enough for him to beat out Butcher, the craftier, more polished player, and Phifer, once considered a big part of the Rams’ defensive future, looked as if he might be only an afterthought.

Phifer took it all in and reacted exactly as Knox wanted. His message back: I care more.

“I was just thinking that obviously there’s some things that I haven’t shown, or that I needed to work on,” Phifer said of his demotion. “I needed to buckle down and be more focused and take it more seriously.

“The spot wasn’t going to be given to me. I had to go out and earn it. And when the opportunity came, I was there to take advantage of it.”

The opportunity arose when Butcher hurt his foot in the opener. Phifer was quietly moved into the starting lineup for the first time since he had broken his right leg at the end of his rookie season.

Phifer seemed to be settling in, totaling 14 tackles in starts against New England and Miami.

Then he got another needling note from Knox-ville.

Apparently not enthralled by Phifer’s work, Knox publicly named veteran pickup Scott Stephen as his probable starter the next weekend against the New York Jets, adding only that Phifer would play, too.

“I don’t want to speak for Chuck, but I think it was a little bit of a motivational thing,” linebacker coach Dick Selcer said.

“I think he wanted Phifer to understand, ‘Hey, don’t stand here twiddling your fingers, just expecting it to be given to you. We’re going to keep finding people (to compete for the job).’

“I don’t think (Phifer) missed a beat. I’m sure he felt that, ‘Hey let me pick it up, they’re sending a real message.’ ”

Phifer went two for two in proper responses, apparently, because after only two practices, Knox praised Phifer’s work and said he was the starter again.

“I’m not even sure how that thing worked out,” Phifer said. “I just tried not to let it get me down. I just went out and practiced hard.”

Against the Jets, Phifer had nine tackles and began showing a renewed zest to mix it up against the run--which has always been considered his weakness.

Phifer probably will never be a run-stuffing star, but Ram coaches now say his confidence and preparation have caught up with his talent.

And there are signs that he has again established himself as somebody who can lock down the right linebacker position as the Rams plan for 1993 and beyond. Butcher, the security blanket, was eventually waived, and Phifer hasn’t received any more messages from Knox recently.

“He’s become more confident of what he’s got,” Selcer said. “He’s becoming more forceful, more physical. I don’t know if you can ever ask a guy who’s 230 pounds to blow up to a guy who’s 260. I don’t know if he’s ever going to be at the advantage there.

“But he’s become a more physical player, a more active player. He’s become a more responsive player and more resilient to the game, in terms of the contact part of it.”

Phifer, the team’s fourth-leading tackler with 38, is the Rams’ only linebacker who stays in on all downs. Kevin Greene plays all downs but moves from left linebacker to defensive end on most passing downs.

“The athletic talent was kind of a foregone conclusion in everybody’s mind, but putting it together had to be part of the whole program,” Selcer said. “The more he handles, the more we let him handle, the more we will allow him to take an active part in everything.

“I don’t think he could ever line up and be a Kevin Greene (type of) rusher. That’d be hard. He could be a rusher, probably. But there isn’t the same physical strength there, know what I mean?

“But hell, everybody isn’t the same. He does function well in a lot of things.”

Phifer says he is proud he is being allowed to play all downs, and, as the NFL turns a bit away from its obsession with sack-happy linebackers, he says he thinks the all-around linebacker is gaining more glory.

“That’s my type of linebacker,” Phifer said. “I’m never a rush-type of guy. I’m never used that way. In the past, linebackers only got credit for sacks. That’s what they’re known as, the Derrick Thomases and Lawrence Taylors.

“I was a little concerned about that, but now, people like Wilber Marshall and Seth Joyner are starting to get recognized, that’s good. So it feels good people are starting to respond to those type of players.”