RAMS ’94 / SEASON PREVIEW : Chuck’s Last Stand

The end of a fine, fine coaching career.

It begins with a whisper: Chuck Knox, 62, is too old to get the job done any longer.

It becomes a question, a rhetorical question: Has the game passed him by?

The television cameras linger favorably upon a fiery Bill Cowher, an energetic Dave Wannstedt, an enthusiastic Dennis Green.

Commentators note that Marv Levy takes teams to the Super Bowl, Jimmy Johnson wins them.

It’s just common knowledge: Dan Reeves rebuilds the Giants overnight; Buddy Ryan sells tickets; Mike Holmgren puts the Packers in the playoffs; Bill Parcells revs up fans in New England.

And Chuck Knox has lost it.

“The 49ers are going to continue to dominate the NFC West Division,” said Pat Haden, TV commentator and former Ram. “It’s just not going to happen in the next two years for the Rams.”

But it has to happen this year, and in sensational fashion, for Knox to remain employed. He might have two years remaining on a four-year contract, but around the National Football League it’s a foregone conclusion: Unless there’s a miracle, Knox is history.

“Is time running out, yes,” said Joe Vitt, Knox’s friend and Ram assistant head coach. “We’ve been here for two years and we’ve built this football team in Chuck’s image. The expectancy is there, the performance must be there and we have got to be held accountable for what we do.”

As if it matters. If the Rams are going to move, they are not going to sully their fresh start elsewhere with a stale coach. If the Rams are not going to move, they are not going to regain the affection of long-lost fans with Knox droning, “Football players win football games.”

Leave or stay, no matter. Knox can’t win.

Knox’s car sits covered with a tarpaulin at training camp, day after day, night after night. He won’t be going home or dining out. The man who is too old to coach is right on top of the game.

Knox has that fine focus, as he likes to say, and there is no doubt who is in charge here. But it is 10 o’clock at night and he is still reviewing videotape, admittedly concerned about an offensive line not fulfilling expectations, and getting nowhere in his day-long efforts to correct the situation.

Problems, and more problems, and it has been five frustrating years since a team he has coached has fared any better than third place in division competition.

The Bills and Seahawks were very Ram-like when Knox arrived, but never so bad later under his tutelage as the Rams (11-21) have continued to be.

What’s wrong with the Rams? All agree, on paper they appear so much stronger, but on the field they show no spark, none of the competitive toughness that traditionally characterize a Knox-coached team.

It begins again with a whisper: Knox is just mailing it in.

“I don’t buy it,” said Joe Gibbs, TV commentator and former Washington head coach. “I talked to Chuck this off-season, and I was out there in Anaheim this last year.

“I remember going off into a corner with Chuck and asking, ‘Why are you doing this?’ The man’s got enough money and things like that where he doesn’t need this, but I asked, ‘Why are you doing this?’

“He looked me right in the eye and growled, ‘I want to win the Super Bowl.’ Shoot, I felt it; he’s driven inside to do that and I think the Rams are very fortunate to have a guy who’s proven and who has a formula. Those kind of guys are very hard to find.”

Chuck Knox football. Say it aloud and immediately a no-nonsense image presents itself. The man has a specific way of doing things, and the man has been nothing but successful.

The Rams were 54-15 in his first tour of duty here. He took doormat Buffalo to a division title, and duplicated the feat in Seattle.

“Some people have a formula, a way of getting the job done,” Gibbs said. “Very few guys have it really. You take a Bill Parcells team and it will have its own look. He has a formula, give him enough time and he’s going to produce a winner. That’s Chuck.

“There aren’t many people who have been able to do that, and Chuck’s been able to do it with more than one group of people. He’s done it over and over again.”

He has been doing this for 21 years as a head coach, and only Don Shula, George Halas, Tom Landry, Curly Lambeau and Chuck Noll have more victories in the NFL than Knox. He is the only coach in the 75-year history of the league to win division championships for three organizations.

“His football teams are sound, not very flamboyant, but sound,” said Boston College Coach Dan Henning, who coached against Knox while at San Diego, Detroit, Atlanta and Washington. “He always had a scheme that was liberal and flamboyant, but you knew he wouldn’t come after you that way until it was necessary.

“He believes in percentages. Go back to that Seattle team, they would be behind and a number of times they’d come back in flamboyant fashion to win. People would say how come he doesn’t do that all the time? Chuck was smarter than that. With the kind of talent he had, if he had played that way all the time he would have lost more games on errors.

“The guy hasn’t won a Super Bowl, but I know this, when you lined up against one of his teams, I don’t care what kind of talent he had, you knew he was capable of beating you.”

The Dallas Cowboys, who went on to win the Super Bowl, lost only three regular-season games in 1992, including one contest in Texas Stadium--to Knox’s Rams.

“Are you trying to tell me Chuck Knox is in a no-win situation?” said Dick Vermeil, who worked previously with Knox. “No way Chuck Knox is ever in a no-win situation.”

The Rams doubled their victories in his first year back on the job, but last season was a torturous journey culminating in a 5-11 finish.

But as bad as it was, there is the memory of victory early on in Houston and the tears welling in Knox’s eyes.

“Any time you want to talk Chuck Knox, you call me,” Vermeil said. “I know how much he cares about what he’s doing.”

Watch the sideline, however, and it does not always appear as if he is breathing. Mike Ditka oozed emotion; Knox needs to be nudged.

“Intense? There’s no doubt it,” said Jackie Slater, who has heard more pre-game speeches than most anyone else. “You can just feel his expectations.

“Before I ever got to know Chuck, Dennis Harrah told me, ‘Chuck Knox will put the fear of God in you.’ There’s just something about the guy that demands respect and professionalism. There’s no doubt in my mind why he’s been successful everywhere he’s gone: He just demands it. He doesn’t say all that much, it’s just his presence.”

The Rams stink, however, and Mt. Rushmore has failed to inspire. The team has provided no hope to date for better days ahead in 1994, and there are those whispers, those questions. . . .

“Hell, lining up offsides is not Chuck Knox being too old,” Vitt said. “We have a young tackle lining up offsides five times, now is he doing that because Chuck Knox is senile?

“He’s coaching exactly the same way now as he did when we were in the AFC championship game in Seattle. He’s going to let his players play and his coaches coach.”

Oddsmakers in Las Vegas say that won’t be enough to change the Rams’ fortunes. They have set the over-and-under for the number of games the Rams will win this year at five.

“The man has overcome adversity all his life,” said Reggie McKenzie, Seattle Seahawk executive and former player for Knox. “Oh, what a motivator; the very best.”

With this year’s Ram team, Knox is confronted with Lazarus, and the great motivator might have met his match.

“It’s a game of people, and if you don’t have the people you’re in trouble,” said Hank Stram, TV commentator and former head coach. “What were they saying about Tom Landry and Chuck Noll a few years ago?

“That’s just ridiculous to say: The game has passed him by. That’s like saying five years after competing in the Olympics, a swimmer can’t swim anymore. How stupid can you be?

“How old was Ronald Reagan when he was President of the United States? If he’s not too old to be president, Chuck Knox is not too old to coach.

“You’ve got a team there that’s talking about moving, the fans are very lethargic and that rubs off on the players. It’s tough enough to win when things are going good.”

Finding a way to win when no one expects such success has been a Knox trademark. Buffalo had been dreadful, and after rebuilding with 5-11 and 7-9 campaigns, including back-to-back 0-4 performances in exhibition play, Knox’s Bills leapfrogged to 11-5 to win the AFC East title.

Running back Curt Warner, “the franchise” in Seattle, suffered a season-ending knee injury in the regular-season opener in 1984. It appeared the Seahawks were finished, but Knox guided them to a 12-4 record and the playoffs.

“He knows how to win,” said Mike McCormack, Carolina Panthers general manager and former Seahawk GM. “We go to Miami for a playoff game, we have to wait five hours in an airport for a plane to be fixed, we get to our hotel at 3 a.m. and it’s one big potential disaster.

“Chuck doesn’t blink. He puts in a new formation on Saturday morning, it works and we win. Incredible.”

Lazarus, however, beckons.

“You tell me, who is going to coach that team to an NFC West Division championship?” Haden said. “The organization has drafted miserably over the years, and while it’s been corrected some since Chuck’s arrival, the talent level has been down for some time.

“Say what you want about Chuck Knox, and I honestly can’t say if the game has passed him by, but what coach can win with that personnel?”

The way Knox had it figured, he was going to coach this team to win. A year ago he was talking playoffs.

“Chuck went down there thinking he had an outstanding quarterback in Jim Everett,” McCormack said. “Chuck had never had that great quarterback before. He did the job in Seattle with Dave Krieg, James Harris and Pat Haden with the Rams, Joe Ferguson in Buffalo.

“I think a lot of us empathize with Chuck, because with Jim Everett it seemed like he had that quality quarterback.”

Knox begins anew with Chris Miller, but that’s Keith Loneker, Clarence Jones and Darryl Ashmore blocking for him.

“When I judge him now versus 18 years ago when I was playing for him, he’s probably hungrier to win now than then,” Slater said. “I can relate to some of the things he’s dealing with.

“People wonder because of my age if I still have that fire, that desire, and when I hear that it just turns up my intensity.”

But the Rams have no chance of succeeding in 1994. Another losing season appears all but guaranteed, and just where will that leave Knox?

“I think this will bring back a lot of the old Chuck, that old steel mill guy,” said Lawrence McCutcheon, Ram scout and former player for Knox. “I know that will be his reaction. I think he will show us all that he still has that fire, that desire to win. I wouldn’t want to tell him there’s no chance of winning.”

Sit across the desk from Knox and ask the questions: Are you too old? Has the game passed you by? Have you just mailed it in?

Knox is one of the game’s most accommodating and accessible coaches in the NFL. He will never compete for space in Bartlett’s Favorite Quotations, but this is a gentleman who conducts business fairly at all times.

And that’s why you can sit across that desk and ask these questions:

Are you too old to keep doing this?

Knox: “Is Marv Levy too old? Don Shula? I hear this stuff, and yes, it hurts, but I’m working as hard as I can work.”

Has the game passed you by?

Knox: “I don’t think it’s passed us by. We had the best organized training camp we’ve had, I think we’re on top of the thing, and no, I don’t think I’m taking things a step slower.”

Are you just mailing it in?

Knox: “I didn’t get to where I am today without working hard. If this situation doesn’t get turned around it won’t be because we didn’t work hard.”

But people are looking for more; they want someone to turn this program around.

Knox: “I don’t know where that person is.”

It’s supposed to be you.

Knox: “I think I have as good a chance as anybody to do it because I’ve done it. Who are you going to get that’s done it before?”

Do you think it’s a no-win situation, what with the prospect of moving or not moving?

Knox: “Do you think if there was a 35-year-old coach here in his third year on the job under the same circumstances, the same thing wouldn’t apply?

“The only defense I can offer is that I have worked hard, and now we just have to wait and see what the outcome is going to be. If we don’t achieve the goals we have set, somebody else has to make the decision about whether Chuck Knox is going to coach this team or not.”

Long hours, more videotape, and Knox doesn’t figure to go quietly into the night.

“Let’s take a look at it this way,” Vitt said. “Here’s a man that because of this game is financially independent. Here’s a man that has raised four great kids. Here’s a man that has three grandchildren that he adores. And here’s a man doing something, not because he has to do it, but because he wants to do it.

“He could walk away at any time, but he made the statement to me, ‘Palm Springs is God’s waiting room to die,’ and he’s not ready to retire to his condo in Palm Springs. He’s still ready to get after some people’s asses, and that ought to make a lot of people in this league concerned.”